


Gnomecoming

by atutkus



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Death, Developing Friendships, Dragons, Fantasy, Found Family, Heroism, Humor, Injury, Magic, Mass Death, Optimism, Parody, Satire, Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26470969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atutkus/pseuds/atutkus
Summary: An adventuring party of (mostly) gnomes gets up to hijinks in the wilds.(Loosely based on a playthrough of 'The Dragon's Demand', written by Mike Shel and published by Paizo, though most of the proper names have been changed...)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Prologue

In the pre-dawn air, on one rolling hill of many just to the east of a little walled town, and just to the west of the unknown, a small campfire lit the gloom. 

A figure crouched next to it, warming himself.

He wore a cloak that hid his face, but not his hands, which he held in the warm air rising over the fire. The hands were calloused and hard, and spoke of many years of training in the arts of hand-to-hand combat.

He was a stranger to these lands, a traveller in search of purpose, and of guidance.

The wind suddenly whipped in the morning stillness, blowing right through the pilgrim. Shivering, he huddled closer to the fire, and rubbed his hands together to keep warmer still.

He’d not been to the town yet. He had been saving it for later that day. He generally preferred to keep to the outskirts of kingdoms as he journeyed -- but it had been a long while since his last hot meal, and longer since his last soft bed. He had a few coins yet in his coin purse. Perhaps it was time to settle. He was no adventurer, after all.

Suddenly the crunch of grass underfoot woke him from his reverie of glowing hearths and hearty stews. The stranger looked up.

There were half a dozen of them. The newcomers were short, reptilian beasts with long snouts and evil, leering, willful eyes. They stood on two long legs, and had thin and whippy tails that extended far out behind them; their crude leather tunics hung loosely over their scaly green skin. Some of them had horns on their heads.

“Hark, mammal,” the leader spat with his cruel lizard tongue. His horns were long and forked, and greatly resembled a large rack of stag’s antlers. “This is sacred Blood Vow ground. You are a trespasser. You will come with us, for your misdeed.”

A slow smirk was all that was visible of the traveller’s face. Slowly he stood, and when he was fully erect, he threw down his cowl.

He was young -- his features were chiseled and handsome, but boyish, and his long and pointed ears belied his nature. He was a Gnome, a small fey creature of mystical origin.

He was clad in robes of silk and saffron, the uniform of his order. His hands tightened into rock-hard fists, and lean, tight muscles vibrated with potential energy, like a rubber band pulled back and ready to launch. His slim but toned frame spoke of a creature of finesse and agility and more than a little strength.

He smiled confidently, faced by odds that he did not particularly hate, and assumed the fighting stance that monks of his order had taken up for millennia.

Then the reptilian interlopers drew their long, wicked-looking knives.

The Gnome continued smiling, his lips frozen in place, but his eyes got a lot wider, until you could see the whites all the way around the iris.

He was doing some quick arithmetic in his head.

He laughed, a bit loudly, and relaxed his posture.

“You all have knives,” he laughed, shrilly, as they surrounded him. “Wh-why didn’t you just say so.”

He held his hands out in front. “You wanna tie me up or anything?”

The only answer was a rough shove.

“Ah, very nice,” he said, starting off in the direction of the shove. “I admire your confidence, not even binding the, uh, the prisoner. Where are we going? This way?”

One of the creatures shoved him roughly again.

“Aha. Yes. That way. Got it. Makes sense.”

He continued chatting nervously until they were gone out of sight over another rolling hill, remarking on their mercy, thanking them for taking him in out of the cold, apologizing for trespassing on their land. His obsequious blathering faded off soon, as did occasional barks by the creatures surrounding him to go one way or another, or for the sake of the Gods, to _please_ shut _up_.

The Gnome felt he could have matched any of them unarmed, but six, with knives? He wasn’t _stupid_.

After all, he wasn’t an adventurer.

The fire dwindled and died.

That was a week ago.

Once upon a time, there were dragons.

Of course there were dragons. There's always dragons.

Something about the body plan has worked out on countless worlds throughout the multiverse. Razor sharp teeth and claws. Massive wings. Fiendish intelligence. 

Impenetrable scales are often a good bet in combating selection pressure. Genes that facilitate fiery breath are generally well-received, if the function can operate economically.

Somewhere in the distant primeval past, some ancient six-legged tree lizard figured out how to use magic. They were able to grow larger than the laws of physics would generally allow. They gained fire magics. And they gained the ability to fly while weighing hundreds of tons, the most magical part of all.

On some worlds they are mere myths, images conjured coincidentally by storytellers, or received as psychic visions by prophets and other madmen through the time-slips and space-streams of the ether, originating from the worlds that dragons frequent.

On some worlds they are simply dull creatures, beasts. Apex predators, sure, no doubt clever, in the way that animals who must outsmart and outmaneuver if they wish to eat tend to be, but at the end of the day, mere thieves of livestock.

On some worlds, they rule.

And so it was on the world of Gard. After the events of the Wyrm War, Humanoid society as it stood was overturned by the draconian authority, and each castle and fortress was occupied by one scaly overlord or another. Men and Elves and Dwarves and Orcs alike were enslaved to the purpose of presenting their Dragonlords with gold and jewels, of making sacrifices in their name, of providing them with, or being, food.

The Dragonlords of Gard settled down into a life decadence and idle infighting, atop their mountains of gold, with all the jewels they could ever want, and all the virgins they could eat, their empire extending to the three corners of the earth.

But that was a thousand years ago.

  
  


Dawn cracked over a wooded ridge as smoke and flames billowed, in chaotic parody of the serene yellows and oranges above. 

A carriage, gilded with the finery of generations of wealth, smoldered in the charcoal and blue of the early morning air. Its horses gone and its owner deceased, it lay on its side like a crushed beetle, mourned by none.

A sharp explosion split the hypothetical ear as flames mushroomed anew, the heat having found some hidden brandy store in some cleverly concealed compartment -- concealed from all, that is, but the fire's rabid destruction.

Away in the woods, bandits whooped and hollered like coyotes with a kill. Theirs was a profitable evening, their dark speciality well-performed. The wealth of this particular generation had moved on, ready to be spent by rough fingers at the nearest tavern or house of ill-repute.

Upon the ridge, six small figures looked on mutely, drinking in their failure of the moment. 

After some time and no small amount of contemplation, one of them said, brightly, “The important thing is, we learned something.”

The others considered this.

After another long pause, another of the figures gave a curt nod, reached down, and threw a rock at him.

That was just now.


	2. Gnome Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gnomes of Gnome Company reflect on their latest failure.

So perhaps Kame wasn't as tactful as he could've been. He knew the Gnomes of Gnome Company didn't technically fulfill their contract, and the ambassador didn't technically make it to the capital city of Kronsfeld alive -- but he didn't see why that was any reason to pull a long face. Anything in the world that you can think of as a learning experience isn't a catastrophe, Kame held. It's just a mistake.

Well, except to the people who died. The footman, and the driver, and the ambassador. 

And, he supposed, their families.

Kame Ruggli was also a Gnome. And an optimist. Sometimes people actually managed to notice the second one before they noticed the first.

Their ponies were long gone, so it was a long trek by foot to the nearest town, just a smudge on the map without so much as a name to pull it out of the wilderness. Around ten miles down, they passed a moss-covered milestone that read, in faded, cracked letters, “Lackwater, 12 miles”. 

The road was not well-blazed.

When they finally rolled into the little hamlet of Lackwater, it was nearly night again, but Kame refused to let that dampen the party's spirits.

In fact, the other Gnomes were so intent on not letting the day get them down, Kame observed, that they headed straight to the nearest pub and ordered the strongest tankards of kidney-melting stout that the barman would give them, and stared at the wall, blank and silent.

People celebrate in different ways, Kame reasoned.

He sucked away at last month's ale (he brewed his own, and brought it with him everywhere, which most tavern owners found so impressive they couldn't stand their own amazement and usually asked him to leave; he was trying to drink stealthily for this exact reason) and asked everyone what they wanted to do now.

“Bathe for a month,” said Mirra, a lovely young gnome with braided blonde hair, wearily scribbling in some leather-bound tome.

“Aestivate until the Festival of St. Kraxion,” said Mal, an older, learned fellow. He was the tallest of the group -- nearly four feet!

“Die,” said Granna, a purportedly female gnome in a heavy cowl and thick goggles. 

Kame had asked Granna why she always wore goggles a couple of days before, when they'd all first met. She had said they were prescription, for her sensitive eyes.

He’d also asked her why she always wore a black cowl, too. She’d told her because of style, and to mind his own business.

Kame had then told her that since he was freelance, he didn't have a business of his own to mind, but she hadn't seemed to hear anything else he’d said after that.

At present, Kame laughed at her hilarious joke, and she gave him that special, odd smile that she did where she turned the corners of her mouth down so far that her chin wrinkled.

“Oh, come on, guys! You know what I mean. What's our next move? What's our next job?”

He supposed no one had considered that question, as at least two of them coughed and spat up the stout they had chosen that unfortunate moment to quaff.

“Is he serious?” Granna asked.

“Kame,” said Mirra, “Our last job was a disaster. And it was our first job! That's a one hundred percent failure rate.”

“Those ruffians decimated our patrons right under our noses, and we were impotent to supercede them!” said Mal, curiously loudly for someone so clearly having a good time.

“The big one with the eye patch actually decapitated the ambassador with one swing,” said Granna, pinwheeling her arms like mad. “Whoosh! Squish! And he wasn't even super looking at what he was doing!”

“We are almost certainly not getting paid,” said Pigglevitch, another member of the party. He was older, and terse. He didn't like to talk much about anything except the bar he planned to open with the funds the party got for their first protection job. He sipped an expensive whiskey quietly, and stared ahead at, and possibly through, the wall.

He rested a hand lightly on the ebony-dark case he carried with him. About four feet tall, resting on tiny wheels, roughly rectangular, and slightly thinner at the top than the bottom, what was inside it was a mystery -- but he was never without it.

Kame turned to the last member of the party. “What about you, Willow?”

Willow didn't say anything. Willow never said anything. She wasn't technically part of Gnome Company -- she was Pigglevitch's little sister, and he took care of her. It was Pigglevitch’s only condition when he signed on -- if you got one, you got the other. Pigglevitch came very highly recommended as an adventuring professional, though, in spite of this additional responsibility.

The young, mute Gnome stared at him intensely, and then blinked very slowly.

“I feel as if that was a positive remark,” Kame said.

“I feel as if you're wrong,” said Granna.

The barkeeper came around, his cool ease dropping on the conversation like an ice cube into a pot of boiling water.

"So," he said, "Can I get you folks another round?"

"Please, dear gods," said Granna. 

"Yes, please," said Mirra.

"I'm good," said Kame

"I'll have his," said Pigglevitch, downing his current two drinks to make room for the next three.

The barkeep hung around for another few seconds. He was a tall Human, though those terms were of course redundant. His skin was a deep brown, and his hair was long and expertly braided. He looked down on the Gnomes with kindly dark eyes. His smock was alone in this bar in being spotless and tidy. His nametag said 'Demetrius'.

"Say," Demetrius said, "you folks are new in town, aren't you?"

"Oh, no, we're just traveling through," said Kame.

"All right," the barkeep said, "Fair enough. But it's getting late, and if you feel like staying by, we have some rooms available. Human size, so feel free to double up. Big savings."

He walked off in the general direction of the bar. "I'll be back with those drinks," he called.

As soon as he was gone, Granna smacked Kame in the arm.

"Ow! What'd you go and do a thing like that for?"

"'Just passing through'?" Granna growled. "You never say that when you're in some po-dunk town!"

"Anyone who says that in a new town gets stuck there," said Mirra. 

"That sounds like an old wives' tale," said Kame uncertainly.

"They proved it," said Mirra. "With science."

"Oh."

"Just like fate, luck, and stepping on cracks to break your mother's back."

"Oh."

Demetrius came back around with the drinks, and they sat a while in silence, sipping quietly and staring at their own thoughts loudly.

Mirra cleared her throat.

"All told, we probably missed out on several hundred experience points apiece tonight," she said, drawing her finger down the ledger where she kept track of such things. "The bandit leader alone was probably worth twelve hundred."

"None of that matters until we get approval to operate by the Adventurer's Guild," Mal said glumly, stroking his fine mustaches. "And as our would-be sponsor is likely all but ashes by now, I'd say our forsaken XP is academic at this point."

Mirra pursed her lips, but nodded, forlornly.

The table lapsed into what Kame judged to be a contented silence, broken only by tapping feet, drumming fingers, and a little light sobbing.

“Look, guys,” Kame said, smiling a little tightly. “I know we've only known each other for a few days, but I REALLY feel like we have something good here! We've all been on adventures before, right?”

They looked at each other, uncertain, and nodded.

“Yeah,” said Pigglevitch. “So what?”

“And in that time have you ever once seen an all-Gnome adventuring party?”

“I'm not a Gnome,” said Mirra.

“No, you haven't,” Kame said smugly. “The Big Folk have the market cornered, don't they? Sure, they'll have us on board to pick locks, and maybe do a little healing, but how many Gnome barbarians do you see? How many Gnome fighters do you see? How many Gnome Paladins?”

He stood on his bench to raise himself up over the crowd (it did not, technically, work). “We have a chance to show the world that we, the Gnomes of Gnome Company, have what it takes!”

There was a silence. Somewhere, out in the tavern, a minotaur coughed. Minotaurs are celebrated coughers, so this cough took some time to fully subside, and when it did, Kame's friends were looking up at him with dull, blank looks of what was, in his mind, unbridled admiration. 

“I'm not a Gnome,” Mirra mumbled.

“That's nice,” Kame said, because he was sure it was.

Mal cleared his throat. “That's all well and good, my optimistic compatriot,” he said, “but if you recall, the ambassador has been dispatched, and there can be no doubt that the onus is on us.”

“Ew,” said Granna.

“ _ Onus, _ ” said Mal. “The word is ‘onus’.” 

“He’s right,” said Mirra. “Without the ambassador as our sponsor for admittance to the Adventurer’s Guild, it doesn’t really matter whether we can compete. We won’t be allowed to.”

“Big Folk may be right, anyway,” said Granna, playing with a dagger idly. She seemed almost amused. “Maybe Gnome Company doesn't have what it takes.” 

Kame scoffed. “How can you say that!?”

“Opening my mouth,” said Granna. She flipped the dagger in the air and caught it by the handle.

Kame’s mouth dropped open, his brow furrowed. They were nodding. They actually... _ agreed _ that they shouldn't work together? That wasn't how it was supposed to be!

“If you really think we should break this off,” Kame said calmly, rationally, “you'll look me directly in the eye and--”

“We want to break things off,” they said, looking him directly in the eye.

“Oh,” was all Kame could think to say.

He hopped down and sat on the stool once again. Then he slid down off of it and lay down on the floor.

“Oh my gods,” said Granna.

“Kame,” said Mirra.

“Nnnnh,” he said.

“Kame,” she repeated, kneeling down next to him. “It's okay. That's just how the adventuring business goes sometimes. Some groups just don't work well together. It's like a chemistry thing. Some groups just don't have that kind of chemistry.”

“Sometimes they have the kind of chemistry that lights carriages on fire,” said Granna.

“I'll not tell you again, you teratogenic defect, it was a magic missile, not chemicals!” Mal growled. ‘

“So you missed,” Granna said. “How do you miss with a magical missile? Why didn’t you make more? Why didn’t you make them bigger? Are you some kind of of weenie? You a weenie?”

“There are  _ rules _ for this kind of thing,” Mal said, turning his nose up at her. “Maximizing the power of even the most mundane spells can carry with it monstrous consequences, which is why magical doctrine contraindicates--”

Granna shrugged. “Sod the rules. We needed more oomph.”

Mal scoffed as he quaffed. “I wouldn’t expect one such as you to understand. I did my duty, which is more than I can say for  _ some _ .”

“Well if you had let me do a sneak attack,” Granna said through gritted teeth, “you wouldn’t have had to have--”

“How can we not work well together?” Kame wailed. “We're all Gnomes!”

Mirra looked like she was about to say something -- Kame wasn’t sure what -- but thought better of it.

“It’s a lovely dream to have, Kame,” Mirra said gently. “But barring some kind of serious and immediate catastrophe, I don't think we should work together again. It can only end in--”

She was cut off by the most beautiful sound Kame had heard all day.

The sound of a catastrophe.


	3. Boom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something terrible happens in the little town of Lackwater -- spurring Gnome Company back into action.

A massive explosion rocked the tavern like the world's worst mother rocking a cradle. 

There was a flash, and a hot moment of blurry horror as a shockwave knocked the Gnomes off of their stools and onto the cool flagstones -- those who weren't already there, of course. Adventurers rained down like a gruesome storm. Kame shot his fellows a look of unreasonable satisfaction with the current happenings -- but, frankly, that wasn't very different from how he normally looked.

Demetrius, the innkeeper, hit the ground just after the tray of full steins he had been carrying. Around the Gnomes, Humans were all hitting the ground a fraction of a second after they had.

An insensitive person could make a joke about that.

Mirra found herself face to face with Granna, which is a terrible thing to happen to a good person. 

She meant no offense, of course, and she’d never say it aloud. It's just that, ever since she’d met Granna, she felt, there was just something off about the tiny, irascible Gnome’s face. That which could be seen around the hood, the giant goggles she never took off, and the greasy clumps of stringy black hair, that is -- which, it turns out, is more than enough to give someone the willies. 

It was frankly Granna’s mouth that was the biggest problem. The lips, the teeth. Mirra knew it was a Gnome that she was looking at, and yet so pervasive was the sensation of oddness that it was hard to look at her. It was like those dreams we have when we are young, of our sunlit homes, cozy and inviting, the warm smiles of our parents, and all of it just slightly off, just slightly wrong, and inspiring all the more terror and dread in the subtlety of the wrongness.

 _Either that or like a pug_ , she thought in a daze. _Like how pugs just look kind of wrong? You know, intellectually, that what you're looking at was descended from a wolf at some point. But your eyes don't buy it_. 

Just. Wrong.

Mirra thought Granna was giving her a look of distress and bewilderment, but soon realized it was just her own visage reflected back in the sheen of the woman’s goggles.

“You okay?” Granna asked in her strangely quiet but gravelly little voice. If Mirra were a more suspicious person she'd have said a modicum of genuine concern tinged her words.

“I'm fine,” Mirra said over the ringing in her ears, and pushed herself to her hands and knees.

Objects were clattering against the roof of the tavern -- rocks and chunks of dirt, it sounded like. Even now, thirty seconds later. What kind of blast could do such a thing? Launch earth and stone so high into the air it came down like a storm?

Around the bar, patrons were moaning and clambering to their various species' extrapolations on the theme of feet. Lackwater was mostly a human town -- but not all of its citizens were human, and of those who were, not all of them were all human.

Mirra smelled smoke.

\---

The rest was a flash. Mirra must have gotten up and run out the door. A pillar of smoke held up the sky, that much she remembered -- but it was a painting in her memory, devoid of before and after, bereft of context, its colors running just a bit. 

Crowds were gathering at the edge of town, which seemed to be the epicenter of the blast. It's not easy to fight through a crowd when the people in it are all twice your size, but Mirra managed.

Finally, after all this effort -- Mirra may have crawled between someone's legs at some point -- she found herself among her Gnome copatriots at the edge of a barrier of onlookers -- those who felt an innate need to be here, now, and bear witness, but just as powerful need to not get any closer.

They formed a neat little fence around a massive pile of rubble, ringed by a miasmic halo of dust and smoke, on a large hill at the edge of town. If not for the people’s attention, and the dirty cloud hovering over it, Mirra could have mistaken it for a naturally occurring boulder field.

“What did that used to be?” came a voice. It was Mal. He appeared at her shoulder, his tight auburn little beard tipped up as he regarded the mountain of stone critically.

“I think some kind of structure,” Mirra replied. “Stone doesn’t come in such squared off shapes naturally. At least, not in this amount.”  
  
The Gnome magus scoffed. “Shows what you know. In the Cube Fields outside the lost city of Hadrobagaskar, everything is square. Rocks. Trees. Birds. You.”  
  
He caught the look in Mirra’s eye. “Largely an accurate assessment, however,” he amended hastily.

“It’s that damned wizard that’s done this,“ said a human onlooker to no one in particular.

Mirra glanced at Mal, not entirely without suspicion.

“A different wizard, I suspect,” Mal said haughtily. And to the man who had spoken, “What wizard, good sir?”  
  
The man looked around, and then down. Mirra really hated it when they looked around and then down.  
  
“What’s all this?” he said, glancing around at them, upset, his two neurons trying desperately to make a connection. “Gnomes?”  
  
“I’m not a Gnome,” Mirra said, because she wasn’t. “I’m a Halfling. Although, technically,” she added, “‘Halfling’ is an offensive Human term. We don’t call ourselves that, because we’re not half of ourselves. To us, we’re one full complete thing. We’d be more likely to call you ‘Doublings.’ Or ‘Superfluites,’ maybe. These are just some off-the-cuff notions. We’d actually probably call you something far more clever.”

The man stared at Mirra with the cadence of a booger dripping from a nostril on a thin line of snot. He may have been trying to do math.  
  
“Actually,” she continued, determined to shed some sunlight in the shady corner that was this Human's brain, “as a point of fact, we generally refer to ourselves as ‘Hob--’”  
  
“Here,” he said, hunkering back on his heels to try and speak to them eye-to-eye, his brain coming close to catching up. “You’re not with that Nope, are you?”

“Come now, Hill,” came a silky voice. “Do they look like they associate with the likes of Camandrius Nope?”  
  
Mirra and Mal turned and laid eyes on a tall, handsome woman, likely in her late fifties, her hair a spun silver undercut by dark and expressive eyebrows. She smiled at the two Gnomes beneficently. She didn’t wear finery -- although she seemed like she could -- but the solemn and conservative robes of local nobility on their days off.

“Nope likes to be the smartest one in the room, and would never hire associates of such an obviously learned and clever bent.” She nodded in deference at Mal, who stared at her with his jaw open.  
  
 _Well she can play him like a fiddle,_ Mirra thought primly. _Pompous old windbag, only takes a few words of flattery to turn his--_

“And you, young lady, who I overheard making highly astute observations as to the nature of this incident,” the woman continued easily. “It is rare to find someone of such incisive intellect. You may be just exactly what this town needs.”  
  
Mirra preened.  
  
“Needs for what?” said Granna, appearing at Mirra’s shoulder and making her jump.

The lady jumped, too. A slight recoil upon meeting Granna for the first time was relatively normal.

“My name is Lady Ross. I'm the Baroness of Lackwater. My family have been the hereditary rulers for over a century.” She did not hunker back on her heels and lean down to be eye-to-eye with them, and Mirra really appreciated that. 

“I have eyes all around this town,” she continued. “I understand you've just arrived in Lackwater, that you've been patronizing the Wise Piper Inn, and that you're a part of an adventuring party.”

“Your eyes are good,” Mirra said, impressed.

“Check your ears, though,” said Granna, folding her arms. “We're disbanded.”

“You're here, aren't you?” said Lady Ross. “A community is in need, and you're here. That seems very like an active adventuring party to me.”

“Everyone's here,” said Granna. “There was a big honking explosion.”

“We broke up this evening,” Mirra said, trying to mitigate Granna's testiness before she started a class war. “Our last job didn't go well, and we decided to see other people.”

“Well, this is a community in need,” she said. “This was once the Black Tower. It was a place of immense history and relevance to Lackwater society, and someone's only gone and blown it up. We could use a real adventuring party.”

Mal and Mirra looked at each other thoughtfully. 

“Well, we'll let you know when we find one,” said Granna.

“I could pay you double the standard rate,” said Lady Ross.

Now that was a thought. Even Granna looked contemplative.

“I'm sorry,” Mirra said. “We'd probably only blow it up more.”

“But there's deep, ancient dungeons and chambers down there, used by old scribes and wizards!” She cried, an edge of desperation overtaking her diplomatic demeanor. “There could be wayward spells and monsters and magical libraries and--”

She stopped, staring at the curious look that had crept over Mirra’s face. It defied description, but if you sprinkled someone’s heart with sugar and then set it on fire, their expression would likely be similar.

Mirra found her voice.

“Libraries, you say?”

\--

Mirra was born in the Halfling village of Glennfyddryn, which was near East Halfpenny, which wasn't really near anything. It was a little hole-in-the-ground place, which was perfect for the Halfling kind. At least, that's what her dad used to say.

She loved her parents. She even loved her hometown, on a good day.

But in her village, they had a tradition. When a young Halfling reached their twentieth birthday, they set out on a Great Finding.

A Great Finding is when a young Halfling sets out into the world to look for purpose, or adventure, or whatever their heart desires. Personally, Mirra had always thought it was just a way for weary parents to get their grown kids out of the house, but when it came time for her Finding, she felt absolutely no desire to argue.

She’d always had a painful need. 

When Mirra was very young, long before the classmates in her little one-room schoolhouse had voted her Most Likely To Hold A Single Index Finger In The Air And Close Her Eyes While Giving An Explanation No One Asked For, there was a traveling library that visited Glennfyddryn once per month, run by Johnny the Elf (he was a Halfling; he was just very tall). Mirra became the first in the village to borrow every book. Then, later, when she could read, she became the first to have read them all.

She was eventually also the first person ever to be banned. She tended not to give them back. If pressed, she might admit that she still had Johnny's copy of “Thag Stronghammer's 101 Tips to a New You” somewhere…

Mirra became despondent when she had supped of all that caravan's desserts, and was thereafter known for pestering any and all travelers to the little hillside village for any books they had handy. She'd take them home and copy them out. In time, she had formed her own homemade library, that made even Johnny's traveling trove seem measly by comparison, and had spent several years of allowance on nothing but paper, ink, and Potions of Cure Light Carpal Tunnel.

But it wasn't enough. She still hungered.

On her Day of Finding, as she departed, she knew what she was going to try to find. The whole village knew.

“What will your quest be?” The alderman asked gently, as Mirra stood before the village, decked in wreaths and flowers, during the Departure Ceremony the morning of her twentieth birthday. “What direction will you have as you go forth into the world, with the lessons and values this community has instilled in you?”

“To find the books,” she said, an odd, mayhemic hunger suffusing her visage.

“What?” said the alderman, thrown off. This was not one of the customary answers. “Which books?”

Mirra met her face, endeavoring to project an ardent fire.

“All of them,” she said.

\--

“Y-yes,” said Lady Ross, clearly puzzled. “Libraries. The tower has been used by monks and scribes since the time of Elicia Blackburn. It was said to have one of the more complete scroll libraries in the region, and as far as I know, the lower cellars were never cleared when the tower was condemned years ago.”

It was hard for Mirra to see past the stars in her eyes, but she managed to find a gap in the crowd.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't decorum to run out on nobility, but there was more at stake here than propriety.

There were books to save.


	4. A Claw in the Gloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal makes a discovery in the ruins of a destroyed tower.

As Mirra precipitously left their little rendezvous, Mal could not help but note, in a moment of indulgence of his voluminous cognitive faculty, what a capricious and flighty sort she was.

“Do you think you can get them in line?” Lady Ross addressed Mal, the only one left in sight, as Granna melted away into the crowds.

Mal closed his eyes and placed his hand palm-down on his chest, as though swearing a life-oath. “Milady, chaos always falls to order, with a wise guiding hand.”

He opened his eyes. “But, perhaps, an additional favor? We find ourselves so vexed as to consider disbandment --” (he considered momentarily, the wisdom of telling this regal lady about the lump of charcoal in the woods that was all that remained of their last charge) “--for reasons that are our own, but which boil down to lost opportunity.” He licked his lips. “I don’t suppose, should we do you this service, that you would mind drafting a letter of sponsorship to the Adventurer’s Guild in Kronsfeld proper, advocating for our admittance?”

Lady Ross shrugged. It was a collapsed keep, not a Tarrasque.

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” she said. “Mister…?”

“Gnommen,” he said. “Malerni Gnommen.”

He bid an apologetic farewell to the noble Lady Ross, and took up a quick jog after his erstwhile, and now again, compatriots.

After some meandering, he found his comrades arguing fiercely at an entryway of sorts that they had found into the heart of the detritus.

“I don't know what it is, but I just feel like we have to get in there,” Mirra lied. She had found, over the years, that most were oddly uninclined to risk their lives for books. People, right?

“Yes! Exactly!” Kame punched the air like an inebriated pugilist. “For adventure!”

“Don't see why we shouldn’t,” Pigglevitch muttered noncommittally, inclined as he was against a precariously perched post.

The odd little child Willow mumbled something, nodding as though imparting some profound and sagacious truth. She didn't make eye contact with anyone, and it was hard to say for certain that this conversation was the one she was reacting to.

“She's abstaining,” Pigglevitch translated.

“Hey,” said Granna, evanescing from the crowd like some pandemonious shade, making all assembled wince in surprise. “We're disbanded. We're fine. We don't need this. This ain't our scene.”

Mirra turned to Mal. “You're the wizard,” she said. “Ancient magical towers would seem to be your forte. What do you think?”

Mal brightened up immediately.

“Well,” he proclaimed, puffing out his chest like an arctic ptarmigan accepting a prestigious award, ”we merely have to apply scientific principle. We must examine what we know, and how we know, and how we know we know. The cost versus benefit analysis, examined between all of us, vis a vis our individual values, is the primary option for determining optimization in our chosen endeavor; to wit, the collapsed tower. We should gather further information on the potential risks. Is this pile unstable? How well have the cellar floors and ceilings held under the collapse? If they are clear, what sort of things live down there? Dire rats? Revenants? Firedrakes? Ought we then take a stealthy approach, or charge in relying on shock and surprise to carry us to victory? What enemies would this work best on? What are our weapon stores? Will all of these weapons work well in confined spaces? Will we--”

“Kame already went in,” Mirra interjected.

Mal sputtered gradually to a stop. “Oh,” was all he could muster.

\--

The interior of the geological mess that was formerly known as the Black Tower, Mal observed, was dank and eerie. From its depths emanated a malodorous, odiferous odor, earthy, pungent, and penetrating, thoroughly vexing and off-putting, and wholly defying cogitable quantification.

“Sheesh,” Granna mused, muffled by the earth and stone as they contorted themselves through the narrow passage. “Smells like fried ass in here.”

...Mal supposed that could describe it, too.  
It was fortunate in the extreme, Mal felt, that the comely Lady Ross had happened across the Gnomes in the fulfillment of her executive duties, as he found it unlikely that any other in her employ would be of a certain size, and otherwise incapable of the physical articulation necessary to traverse the scatterplot of boulders and hewn cobble they now trekked.

He waxed thoughtful on the subject of he and his cohorts’ allure to the radiant Lady. What blessed quality had bid her eyes toward them? Perhaps merely their relative size, so much more convenient for traversing this chaotic detritus -- but no doubt their ostensible cognitive superiorities played a major role in securing the prize that was this noble endeavor.  
The pathway cut a gradually downward slope, which soon transitioned into a much less gradual downward slope.

As they descended, they reconnoitered.

“What could cause an explosion like that?” Mirra asked.

Mal ran through a list of possible culprits, waxing long on the nature of sodium and potassium, and of certain ratios of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, and of certain gases and liquids, of unknown origins, that were to be found in abundance beneath the earth’s crust, all of which were massively flammable to the point of being explosive. But just as he was reasoning through the fine details, culled from observation and all of the data points the party had already collected, Kame interrupted from the front of the formation. 

“Magic, probably,” he said cheerily, in his little sing-song way.

_Ah, yes,_ Mal thought balefully. _Magic._  
In fairness that did remind him of something important. He felt around in the dirt as he scrambled between the stones, and eventually came up with his prize -- a long, thick shard of wood, once the part of some beam or doorway, likely more ancient by far than any structure in the village below the tower hill.

He incanted a few choice words below his breath, and felt the spell grow in his hand -- first a tingle, then a solid lukewarm pressure, as though the air between his fingers and resting atop his palm had suddenly grown weight, gained substance.

Although invisible to any onlooker without a wizard’s sight, residing as it did in the land between worlds, and occurring as it did more in the spaces between the smallest moments it was possible to have -- the spell very much had presence in this world. It had presence, and function -- and, like all magic, a price to exact.

Mal smeared the spell on the fragment of wood, and wiped the rest off immediately on the corner of a boulder. 

The spell sizzled for a moment, settling into its new perch, and then suddenly burst into light, as it slowly began consuming the organic cells within the wood. An observant onlooker -- Mal was certain there were none here -- would note the spot where he wiped the spell off was covered in little sparks and flecks of light as well, where the spell was finding and consuming insects, tiny bits of vegetation, and even organisms too small for the naked eye.

The light spell, in a large concentration, would consume but not replicate. It would give light until it died, of a lack of fuel, or in the fullness of time not more than an hour. Or if Mal cancelled it, which he did presently to the little smears of spell left on his hand with a whispered incantation. He didn’t need to be eaten alive by a magical torch.

The light was pale, compared to a flame, and was a sort of muted purple in color, but it didn’t give off heat, and it didn’t smoke, and it wouldn’t consume precious oxygen as they descended further and further from the life-giving sky. 

The faces of the others swam into focus, finally letting their admiration for his daunting talents take life on their face.

“Oh, Mal, how clever of you!” Kame gushed.  
“Well done,” offered Mirra.

“I forgot you could be useful sometimes,” Granna complimented.

“About time,” grumbled Pigglevitch, from behind.

But Mal, for once, wasn’t listening to this praise. When the light revealed his fellow Gnomes to him, it also revealed something else. Something he was not very happy about. 

It revealed a claw sticking out of the rubble.

“Mal?” someone called.

Images scrolled through his mind as he desperately outpaced his own mental panic. Claws? Narrowed it down. Not a humanoid species. Scales? Not mammalian. Some kind of reptile. Four fingers? No, five. An articulated, opposable thumb, hidden partially by some fallen scree. Size? Large? Small? Medium. About the size of his own. Mottled grayish green in color.

“Mal? Are you all right?”

He wrinkled his nose. There were a couple of species offhand that could fit all of those descriptions. Factoring in creatures that only lived in this region, even, he could likely account for four or five that might--

The smell. That smell. The, the, the fried ass smell. In a flash, he knew what sort of beast lay broken and bloodied beneath the rubble of this ancient tower. Broken, bloodied, and hopefully exceptionally dead.

“Mal!” It was Mirra, she had him by the shoulders and was shaking him violently. “What’s wrong, Mal?”  
He looked into her eyes, two pools of azure, a scant few inches away, and also miles.

“Kobolds,” he said.


	5. Kressek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party meets some low-level monsters that they were CLEARLY supposed to fight and then...
> 
> ...Kame's player rolled a twenty.

Kobolds. Granna hated Kobolds.

She hated them as much as she hated goblins. She hated them as much as she hated hobgoblins, bugbears, owlbears, owls, bears, turkeys, turnips, humans, spider monkeys, caterpillars, baby puppies, and other Gnomes.

...By that measure, she supposed, she was actually pretty neutral on the subject of Kobolds.

They bred in the wild like nobody’s business. Certainly not Granna’s. But they hunted and gathered on the fringes, in the wastes. On land no one else wanted, until someone wanted it and drove them out.

They have a reputation for being savage. Any people who tend to get driven out or wiped out from land that a bigger civilization wants often have that kind of reputation.

Any people who resist, anyway. The ones that let themselves be stomped out are usually demonized for a century or two, and then spoken about with sadness at their passing, as if nothing could have been done about it. Usually while the people that did the stomping are planning to get a good stomp in on someone else.

But that was another gripe altogether.

\---

Mal stared in mute horror at the claw his little glowing stick had revealed.

Granna soaked in the muteness while it was there.

Finally, against her better judgement, she had to curl her lip and challenge it. It was getting awkward.

“What’s the big deal,” she said. “They’re just big lizards.”

The grouchy old mage turned on her like she’d told him the Grand Archwizard of all of Emor was a fat mewling baby with a superiority complex the size of the Lost Continent of Pacifis (she had told him this earlier, which is how she knew what it looked like).

“What’s the ‘big deal’?” he shouted, as if the phrase ‘big deal’ was some laughable perverted ideation of Granna’s lesser generation. “Kobolds thrive on death and blood! They butcher and kill, and sow fear wherever they tread! Their bloodlust knows no bounds!”

While he kept talking about whatever, Granna bent down and examined the protruding appendage.  
It was gnarled and twisted, like an old oak limb in a big fire. It definitely did not belong to something that was still alive. There was blood on it -- sure, it would be hard to imagine that not being the case, given the circumstances -- but there were also little white scars here and there, flitting out from behind scales and scutes, and a bit bigger and brighter in the thinner skin of the palm. It was the hand of a life well-lived, that had received, and almost certainly done, quite a lot of damage in its time, only to come to an end here.

Granna found herself uncomfortably close to being able to respect that.

The hand also had a gold ring on it.

“-- so if you could perhaps find your way to showing a little bit of respect for what we’re up against,” Mal was continuing haughtily, “what fate might befall your comrades, or even yourself, that would be great.”

Granna laughed. He shushed her, and she stopped laughing, but not for the reason he wanted.

“They could be right behind us, waiting to ambush,” he said, glancing back down the passage behind Willow, to where the light from his magic stick was consumed by shadow. “They won’t wager on a frontal assault, the craven cowards!”

“So they’ll sweep the three corners of the earth butchering as they go but they’ll be too cowardly to meet us face-to-face?” Granna said, a touch less amused than she’d like to admit.

He stopped, and looked as though he had a lot of words to say and no order to put them in.

Granna wished she were more satisfied about that.

“Why are you even here,” he said quietly. He wasn’t asking a question. “You voted against.”

He stood up and left, taking the light with him.

Granna felt the others pass close by, heard them scuff off down the tunnel, generously not making any comment. Probably laughing at her.

She stood stock still in the dark as their sounds faded away up ahead. Just her and the dead Kobold.

After a moment, she glanced back the way they had come. In spite of Mal’s light being long gone around a corner, she could make out the edges of the crumbled stone fairly easily. It would be the work of a few minutes to get back. Grab an ale back at that tavern. See if they did chicken wings.

She growled at herself. She growled at the stone. She growled at the crumpled, dead Kobold, she growled at the ring on its finger. You’d best believe she growled at Mal.

She turned and stomped down the pathway after the rest of the party. What the hell.

Pocketed that ring before she went, though. They didn’t call her a rogue for nothing.

\---

When she caught up with the others, she could hear voices echoing up among the stones. It took her longer than she would have liked to realize the voices weren’t theirs. 

She _really_ should've, too. Sounded more like gargling vomit than coherent speech, to her. Granna supposed she must have thought it was just Mal making up words again, and tuned it out.

There was a light. Mal must have quashed his magical torch, because the light Granna saw was dancing, flickering firelight, golden in hue. The source was unseen, but was ostensibly coming from behind a boulder, around which the others were parked, peeking over the edges with keen interest.

Only Kame seemed to notice as Granna rejoined them. He smiled and winked at her, the bastard

“Kagrat sheeno kanaphus,” came the guttural squeal from around the boulder. It sounded like a voice of aggression, of authority, of seriously needing a throat lozenge.

It must have been Draconic.

Granna found a crack and peeked out herself. The yelling continued for some time while she struggled to align herself, but finally…

There were at least half a dozen. No doubt armed to the, and with, teeth.

A Kobold is a bit like an upright lizard, in that it’s an upright lizard. They have talons like a bird of prey, scaly clawed hands, wide neck frills, powerful jaws. In some regions, males and females both grow horns, but around the region that Lackwater belonged to, the females were hornless and bald. They stand about as high as a Goblin or Gnome, and they absolutely hate both. 

_They are incredibly racist_ , Granna reflected, _like most of the Lesser Races._

She looked closer. Kobolds were, like Mal had said, powerful and warlike, but these ones seemed more outfitted for something more like contracting, or construction. Sure, they had weapons, but their armaments seemed hastily assembled. Of the Kobolds present, standing in a line and staring straight ahead like soldiers, only the big female that was pacing around and shouting at them was wearing any kind of armor. The rest wore helmets and sported picks and masonry hammers, in addition to rusty daggers and the occasional mace.

Some of them were apparently badly injured, but still they stood. Still they took all of the abuse they were given from their superior.

“Useless creatures,” Granna muttered.

“No one is useless,” Kame said, quietly.

Granna rolled her eyes.

“Rrthok fatat,” the leader was saying, waving her arms around wildly, staring wildly ahead, pacing, turning. She didn't seem to actually care much about the presence of her fellow lizard monsters. “Cav burdia spengo kanapho!”

With that, she pointed at something in the corner of this little break in the chaotic rubble. She jabbed her finger at it again and again, like she was trying to make the claw on the end fly off and do ranged damage. Granna squinted through the gloom.

It was a pile of cloth. Clothing? Trash? It looked wet. It looked…

She let a breath sneak in through her nose. She’d been breathing through her mouth since the Kobold smell had started to get REALLY rank. Strong smells gave her a headache.

She smelled blood. Human blood.

It was a body.

“Hell with this,” she muttered, and curled her fingers around one of her daggers.

She stopped.

 _Kame_ , she thought. _Oh my gods, Kame, you glorious moron._

He was striding out of the little hollow where the Gnomes crouched, that ridiculous golden retriever smile on his face, ready to welcome the reptiles to this dung heap with open arms.

In the brief time she'd known Kame, Granna had come to dread that look. You see, she'd been adventuring for a couple of years already when Mal tapped her to join Gnome Company. She'd quested the darkened wilds with her fair share of sword and/or sorcery hoodlums. Assassins, bloodragers, wizards, swordsmen. All races, all shapes and sizes, serving all gods and none. All of them so very different, yet all sharing one key trait: that given the opportunity, they'd launch themselves right at the neck of whatever screeching, clawed, be-tentacled beastie that happened their way, not stopping until its still-beating heart stained the flagstones crimson. No questions asked. No sleep lost. Just pure venom, pure lust for the kill.

Kame, however. Kame was about to do something far, far more horrifying.

Kame was going to be nice.

\---

Granna wasn’t sure if the Kobolds saw Kame or heard him first. Possibly a mixture of both. She did know that the leader saw him last, and only looked around to figure out why all of her soldiers suddenly had weapons in their scaly hands.

She herself drew up a spear a head taller than she was and started barking at Kame in her weird reptilian tongue.

They were each of them about to get a neck full of angry Gnome as the party hastily brought their weapons to bear -- Granna with her twin daggers, Mirra with her bow, Mal with a faint but sinister glow about an outstretched hand, and Willow with her staff -- although in fairness, she was looking in completely the wrong direction, and gods only knew what she actually saw.

Only Pigglevitch, ever the stoic, did not seem overly perturbed. He rested a hand absently on his case, stroking it lightly, as if in thought.

Pigglevitch saw Granna looking his way and glared at her. It was probably his version of winking.

A second before they could thunder out like the ponymen of Gnome Apocalypse, Kame started throwing up.

Wait. No. He wasn't throwing up. He was speaking...Draconic?  
  
“Rrekum frochem,” he said.

The leader hesitated, her hand on her javelin. She seemed puzzled.

“Rolicali boshka,” she demanded.

“Ma ramaska bo tacheli. Fera vermerent,” Kame said, smiling lightly, no doubt dooming them all.

He waved in the party’s direction and they shrunk up faster than a guinea pig in a hawk’s nest. _It’s one thing to go into battle against a ferocious enemy_ , Granna reflected. _It’s entirely another to not know if you’re allowed to kill them anymore because suddenly we’re all being nice._

The leader peered around the boulder at them. They stared back, more embarrassed than anything. Granna waved feebly.

Far from enraged, or even annoyed, the leader looked thoughtful.  
  
“So,” she said, and it took the Gnomes a moment to realize that she was speaking very passable Common -- a Kobold’s voice is always a little alien. “I knew this Baroness would send forces to investigate, but I never imagined that even her cold heart would bid her send her village’s own children.”  
  
If Granna had been drinking, she’d have sprayed the wine list all over her companions. 

_Ugh,_ thought Granna. _Why am I not drinking?  
_  
“Um,” said Kame, “We’re Gnomes, actually.”  
  
“Not a Gnome,” said Mirra.

The Kobold looked from Gnome to Gnome.

“What’s...Gnomes?” she said, hesitantly.

“Kind of like an elf, but smaller,” said Mirra.

The Kobolds instantly leveled their weapons again.  
  
“And way cooler,” Granna said brightly.

The Kobold leader sniffed deeply, taking in the scent of the Gnomes -- more than one member of the party felt, vaguely, like they should be offended on some level.

She sneered suddenly, as though finally recognizing what they were doing.

"Tschmekh," she growled, her snout wrinkling.

"Tschmekh," murmured some of the Kobolds behind her, weapons gripped tighter still than before.  
  
“Chopah,” said Kame putting his hands up and stepping in front of the spears, his smile bright and confident. “Relax. We’re all friends here.” 

This innocuous statement had a curious effect on the Kobolds. They seemed almost upset, or maybe disbelieving? So hard to tell with lizard faces. But they instantly pulled their weapons away, and sheathed them where possible. One of them threw theirs down, grunting in annoyance.

“Uh. Kame,” said Mirra.

“Are you certain, young...Gnome?” said the Kobold leader.

“Absolutely, completely, and entirely,” Kame chirped, rocking back and forth on his heels.  
  
Mirra pulled Kame away, and back toward the other Gnomes. “Kame,” she said, painfully severe. “Kobolds take friendship VERY seriously.”

“So do I, friend!” said Kame, and hugged her.

Mirra pushed him away. “No, Kame. You don’t get it. For Kobolds, it’s practically a religious rite. Friendship is a vow they take. If you initiate the friendship, and they accept, you get to ask one big favor of them, and they get to ask one big favor of you.”  
  
“Oh?”

“It usually involves violence.”  
  
“Oh.”

“Is that really true?” Granna asked.

“Yes,” said Mirra. “I read it in a book once.”

Mirra had read everything in a book once. Possibly more than once.

“My kind of friends,” Granna said.

The leader leaned her javelin against a stone, and sat down, along with her Kobolds, cross-legged before the Gnomes, bidding them to do the same. They did, with wildly varying degrees of enthusiasm. 

Mal grumbled the whole way. Granna got the impression he didn’t particularly enjoy the notion of being friends with a Kobold.

“My name is Kressek,” said the leader, Kressek. “I am of the Blood Vow Kobolds. You have heard of this?”

“No,” said Kame. “We’re new to the area.”  
  
Kressek nodded, her long, dragon-like face swinging like a perpendicular pendulum. “Blood Vow is our tribe. We live in caves, in the hills north of this village. We’ve always lived at peace with the human tribe of Lackwater, but lately, there have been…” she looked for the word, “...changes.”

“Whose body is that over there?” Granna asked.

From the way the others craned their necks, it became apparent that no one else had noticed the pile of former Human in the gloom.

Kressek looked grave. “A Human of Lackwater. Wizard. His name was Nope.”

“Nope!” Mal exclaimed. “That corpulent lout from the village accused us of being in collusion with a wizard named Nope.”

“This was all Nope’s doing,” said Kressek. “He wanted the Tower robbed and then destroyed. He had a deal with our Wyrm, Zuggok. Zuggok sent us to do Nope’s bidding. We were to exca...excava…” She squinched up her face. “...dig out the foundations from underneath the tower, and let it fall in a natural way, so that no one would suspect.” She cast her eyes down. “But something went wrong in one of the basements, and there was an explosion.”

“Old spells, likely,” Mal chimed in. “They sometimes grow wild and unstable if left alone for too long. A wizard should show better sense.”

“Did you see any books?” Mirra asked, a crazed look in her eyes.

“Books?” said the Kobold, dubiously. “ _Kerakhgh._ Tomes? Scrolls? Speculative anthologies?" 

Mirra nodded.

"Nope had them removed.”

The Halfling's face screwed up, and tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

“I lost many Kobolds,” said Kressek. “Kobolds I knew from egg. Nope can burn in the _rodo hahgno thash_.”

“Hell of the Flesh-Eating Autonomous Potato Peelers,” Kame translated.

“Yeugh,” said Granna.

Pigglevitch said nothing.  
  
“I would like to make a suggestion,” said Kressek, “since we are now friends.” 

They all leaned in. 

“Our…’leader’ Zuggok made a decree when he sent us out to work with the wizard. He told us that if our involvement with the toppling of this Witch Tower were discovered…” She took a deep breath. “...we were to invade Lackwater, and slaughter as many as we could.”

Silence ruled the ruins.  
  
Kressek stared at them, scanning their features for signs of reaction. Granna once again became acutely aware of the existence of the two daggers at her sides.

“I do not wish to do this, though,” she said, after about ten thousand years. “I do not wish to serve Zuggok. I do not wish to serve his new god, Carvonyx. I do not wish to kill those I have no quarrel with.” She growled, which was alarming, until they saw her shoulders heave, and they realized she was just sighing. “I have seen too much death today,” she concluded wearily.

She stared them each in the face in turn.

“Perhaps,” she said, “as friends, you could request that I not slaughter the innocents of the Human tribe of Lackwater.”

“I request that,” Kame said.  
  
“I second that request,” Granna said.

“Sure,” said Pigglevitch, who looked bored.

“Hissss,” said Willow, looking at one of the other Kobolds. She seemed to be making him uncomfortable. It was the first time most of the Gnomes had ever heard her speak.

“And in return,” Kressek said loudly, with the cadence of one holding a hammer high over a nail, “You can do me a favor.

“Anything,” said Kame, his heart an open tub of melted butter left unattended on the kitchen counter.

In came Kressek like the family cat.

“I would ask you to kill Zuggok,” she said.

More silence.

“Kill?” said Kame.

“Are we not friends?” said Kressek.

 _Oh,_ Granna thought. _This lizard is good._

“Zuggok has been a plague unto my people since he took control of the tribe a year ago,” Kressek said. “He has disrupted our peaceful way of life. He has torn down our gods. He has demanded much of us, and offered little in return. My people need to be freed of him.”

“I just…” Kame seemed very conflicted. “I’m not by nature given to violence.”

“If he remains, it will mean war in the region,” Kressek said, her authoritative facade fraying somewhat, allowing a glimpse at a desperate leader underneath. “He’s murdered, conspired to destroy, he’s taken slaves, he’s--”

She froze, staring at Kame. 

Granna glanced at his face, and that’s when she saw the most terrifying thing she’d seen all day. More terrifying than a dead claw sticking out of the rubble, more terrifying than half a dozen armed lizardmen bearing down on them. More terrifying, even, than the smile on Kame’s face right before he revealed the party to them.  
  
She saw Kame frown.

"Slaves?" he said.


	6. Oh, Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oops! Late update! Sorry guys I was just so excited about uhhh work.
> 
> In this chapter we finally meet Grimmil, the final member of Gnome Company.
> 
> (The story was, Willow's player had to stop playing a few sessions in -- we kept her around just in case they ever came back, but they never did. So another friend joined the game, and has been there ever since. They...basically made Krillin from Dragonball Z: Abridged...)

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.   


The Kobold foreman, the one with the split horns, like a deer's antlers, was coming down the line. The Kobold with the whip.

The Gnome called Grimmil glanced at Bophrem. The Human boy stared back at him, wide-eyed.

He looked down. His bruised, manacled hands rested on the chainmail shirt he was supposed to be repairing. He was neither smith nor tailor, and it was apparent. The shirt looked like it had had a cannonball pushed through it. It was supposed to have been long done by now.

The foreman was coming closer, his cruel eyes darting from workstation to workstation, occasionally barking some word out in fractured Common. One or two people had already been taken out to be beaten today. He was almost to Grimmil!

Grimmil looked at Bophrem, he looked at the line behind him. He took in all the weary faces. He smelled the acrid scent of Kobold and earth, the stale subterranean air. It very well may have been his last sensation at all -- that and a stabbing, and hopefully brief, pain. His hands tightened on the chainmail, cold, rough.

And heavy.

Something in him snapped.

The foreman stood before his station and growled something at the Gnome. It was in Common, but Grimmil didn’t even understand. He was past that.

He glared at the lizard beast with fire in his eyes, and, calling upon all the strength instilled within him by decades of exercises at the monastery where he was raised, he whipped the broken armor around like it was a flail.

The edge of it caught the creature both in the head and by surprise, drawing blood from his flesh and gasps from Grimmil’s fellow prisoners.   


The Kobold stumbled back, and his head hit the stone wall of the deep cave with a meaty  _ thwock _ .

He went down hard, at the very least unconscious.

Grimmil froze. Oh gods. Draconic yelling echoed through the chamber. The foreman hadn’t been alone. A dozen slaves and one guard? That would be a recipe for disaster. At least three other Kobolds, each armed with clubs and knives, were noisily making their way toward him.

The Gnome clambered over the bench as fast as he could, and as far as his moorings would allow him. Hanging over the table, he pulled the fallen Kobold’s still body toward him and fished the keys off of his belt loop. There were two locks to undo -- the one at his ankle that chained him to the bench, and the ones that chained his arms together. He may not even have had time for one lock.

Heaving himself back behind the bench, Grimmil jammed the key home at the lock between his legs, just in time to see a Kobold guard rear before him, knife upraised!

Only to be tackled by Bophrem, with what little reach he had.  
The Kobold went down, his head cracking on the corner of the workbench. He did not move.

Grimmil quickly turned the key, popping the manacles loose. He didn’t have time to do his hands. He didn’t have time to help Bophrem.   


Bophrem glared at him. “Go, Grimmil! Bring back help!”

The Gnome nodded quickly, and ran down the hall.

He only looked back once, and it was just in time to see a Kobold guard bring her club down on the back of Bophrem’s head.

He kept running.

  
Grimmil was born to the monastery, in a land very far away, some twenty-seven years ago. It was a pretty good life, and he was loathe to leave it. But he needed something more than ritual and meditation. His time at the monastery had provided him with a lot of tools to succeed, and what good is a tool if you keep it in the toolbox?

Turns out, it stops the tool from getting scuffed up. Or broken. Or enslaved, his current predicament.

He'd only been out on his own for a year, and it hadn’t been kind to him. He took a ship from his home country...and that sank. He was saved, though. By mermaids. Who tried to eat him. He finally made it to dry land, which turned out to be the mouth of an active volcano. 

He'd been to the sheer cliffs and mountains of the Southeast Pole, seen the Walls of Water that bounded the world in the West, wandered in the Great Mushroom Forests of inner Bucolia. And each of these wonders of the world was worse than the last.

By the time he made it to the land immediately east of a little backwater town called Lackwater, he was already missing that spartan little room, and the hard wooden pallet the monks used for beds.

Then he was ambushed by these strange dragon men, chained up to a bench, and forced to mend clothing and armor for them.

It’s a hard life, for a Gnome on their own.

The only solace he had, Grimmil felt, was in Bophrem. Bophrem kept him alive.   


He was a young Human. Probably around fourteen or so. Chained up next to him, the two got to talking.

Well. They got to Bophrem telling Grimmil to quit freaking out every hour or so.

It quickly became apparent that Grimmil had no skill for repairing mail. Bophrem did, though. He said that his mother had taught him a little crochet back on his home farm just outside of Lackwater, and that chain mail was basically the same idea. For his first week in the hellish draconian sweatshop beneath the earth, Bophrem did Grimmil's work for him. He could do it quickly, and was sly enough to do it slower while the foreman was watching, so they had no reason to think that things weren’t adding up.

So for a while it was okay. Grimmil would give the boy half of his rations -- he was smaller than him anyway, and had survived on less food back at the monastery -- and in return he’d do both of their chainmail repairs. 

It wasn’t a perfect existence. No existence where being chained up and forced to work long hours for scraps of food makes a more than fleeting appearance is. But they were kept alive.

Until a day ago. While trying to untangle a particularly snarly loop in a chainmail vest that had definitely been on someone who was no longer alive, something in Bophrem's wrist popped -- so loud Grimmil could hear it several feet away.

He said it hurt at first, but then it was just numb and prickly. His hand was slow to respond from then on, and he found that, while he could still use it after a fashion, it limited his speed, and he could no longer reasonably be expected do anyone else's work but his own.

And Grimmil tried to do his own work. He really did! But the foreman immediately caught on to the sudden drop in quality, and had begun threatening his life should he falter further -- which, of course he did, sheer terror not being much of a balm to one’s concentration.

Finally, the foreman had pulled his knife on the Gnome, and told him he’d spill him across the bench if he should come back to an unfinished vest on his next round.

And then it was now.

Grimmil ran blindly, chained hands out in front of him, down the hall -- tunnel? Not sure. It really rode the line between the two, as far as Grimmil could tell. He never took Draconic Architecture back at the monastery. Whatever it was, he ran down it.

The sound of Kobolds growling and snapping at each other in their nasty lizard tongue chased him all the way. He took a few lefts, and he took a few rights -- he wasn’t sure how many of each and when, but he figured that if he took enough of them, the Kobolds would get just as lost trying to find him as he was trying to get away.   


Very suddenly, Grimmil heard tinny little bells going off throughout the Kobold lair. He could hear the clanking and jingling of lizardfolk in armor marching down the halls.  _ I'll probably be struck down by a Kobold in armor Bophrem fixed for me,  _ Grimmil griped grimly.

He knew it was only a matter of time, and sure enough, he soon rounded a corner and found himself facing down a half a dozen of the armored fiends, marching in two lines quickly, straight for him. 

Oh, gods!

Trying to reverse his step as fast as possible, he tripped over his own feet and crashed to the floor. He knew he couldn’t get away, so he curled into a ball and waited for the end.

...Which never came. Or at least, not then.

He risked a peek. He’d be just as dead with his eyes open as closed, after all.

They’d stomped right past him, and continued on down the tunnel. They...they MUST have seen him, right?

Maybe the bell wasn’t for him.

Sure enough, as they reached the intersection with another tunnel down the way, they suddenly broke formation as SOMETHING jumped between them -- something blurry, wielding a mace, and radiating fury.

They were down in seconds -- some unconscious, some just wishing they were. 

In a flash, the streak was past Grimmil, barely casting him a sideways glance. Grimmil didn’t catch a very good glimpse as the thing sprinted past him, clearly on a mission, but he could swear...it...was it? It looked like…

...a Gnome. 

But Gnomes couldn’t be adventurers.

“Kame!” shouted a voice from down the hallway. “Slow down!”

There were more of them! Three gnomes ran past him, in various stages of armed and various stages of wheezing. 

A fourth one stopped. She was the ugliest gnome Grimmil had ever seen. He almost wished that the bloodrager had been the one to stop.

“Hi there,” she said, pulling what looked like a hairpin out of a sleeve and setting to work on the manacles that held his arms together. “This is sort of like a rescue.”

Grimmil found his voice, buried underneath some terror.

“Is...is he normally like that?”

She wrinkled her nose, which was just the worst. “Who?”

“Th-the one in the front.”   


“Who, Kame?”   


She seemed to give it some thought as she worked. “I can honestly say, he’s usually a lot worse.” She looked up the hallway after her cohorts, a mildly annoyed look on her face. “At least this, I get. The man does not care for slavery.”

The manacles popped open. Grimmil rubbed his nude, bruised wrists for the first time in over a week.

She regarded him coolly as he stood up.

“My name’s Granna, by the way.”   


“Grimmil,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”   


“Liar,” she said. She turned back down the hallway, to where they’d all come from. “Hey! Pigglevitch! Get the lead out!”

A sixth and final Gnome appeared in Grimmil's vision. He was pulling a massive case on wheels. 

“Don’t rush me,” he said. He passed without even looking over at Grimmil, and was gone after the others, his trunk trundling and wobbling like it had a life all its own..

“W-what’s this all about, anyway?” Grimmil stuttered.

Granna looked at him and grinned. No,  _ that _ was the worst. Grimmil could swear her teeth were slightly pointed.

“We’re gonna kill the Wyrm,” she said.

Oh, gods.


	7. Cowards and Killers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The captured humans are freed -- but what now?
> 
> Posting a little early -- so I don't put it off and end up posting late again...

Kame was generally of the opinion that no one, no one on this good green Gard, in the history of conflict, had ever won a war. No one had ever won a fight. Because if the capacity of rational thinking peoples to come to consensus, to communicate, to find common ground, ever breaks down to a point where one or more parties feel that physically overpowering their opponent is the only way to get what they need, well. By that measure, they’ve already lost, as hard as a thinking being can lose.

But there were...worse things.

\---

His mind was blacked out. He truly did not know what he was doing, moment to moment. His vision was glazed in red.

If he were bigger, there would have been dead on the floor behind him.

His memory was rough and swimming. It always was, in those moments. But he remembered some things. He remembered the little bald, chained Gnome, in his saffron monk’s robes. That had told him he was getting close. 

He remembered someone yelling for him to stop or slow down -- probably Mirra. She was always the cool head of the group.

By the time he burst in on the central chamber with the benches, the rage was starting to lose its hold on his brain. Doubts were surfacing. Had Kressek told the truth, or was this a ploy for her own personal gain within her Kobold community? Were these Kobolds innocents? Is it possible that ‘friends’ meant something different to Kobolds?

But his mind was soon returned to the rage's grasp. Several rows of benches, and a dozen or so figures chained to them -- bruised, bloodied, filthy. 

A pair of Kobolds were already down, one unconscious, the other trying to sit up, with a scaled claw clapped to a bleeding head wound.

Two more stood over an unconscious inmate, clubs raised. A boy. A little Human boy.

That's the last thing he remembered for some time.

\---

When Kame came to, Mirra was shaking him.

He looked around wearily. Yes, there were no slaves here anymore. Only free people.

And all the Kobolds were sleeping.

Granna was working on their chains and manacles, but a half a dozen of the formerly indentured were huddled against the far wall, like mice hiding from an invading snake. Their eyes, locked on Kame, communicated something of a mixture of awe and fear.

The Gnome monk, the one from the hallway, now free of his manacles, was attempting to help the young boy off the floor. The boy stood, and pushed him away, fending off all further assistance, and walked away from him.

The monk’s face mirrored Kame’s heart.

Pigglevitch arrived in the doorway, his big case trundling behind him. “Did I miss anything?” he asked without intonation.  
  
Kame realized he was sitting in the middle of the floor, and rocking a little. Forward, back, forward, back.

He probably looked like he was deep in thought, but he wasn’t. He was just feeling.

Somewhere off behind him, an argument had broken out. The Gnome monk was trying to talk to the young Human. He didn’t catch the specifics until the boy started yelling.

“You could have escaped at any time!” he cried, his speech a little slurred. “You’re here a week, and then when it looks like you might get hurt, you overpower the guard like it’s nothing! I _pitied_ you! I did your _work_ for you!”  
  
“I, I was scared,” said a quiet voice that could only have been the monk’s.

“Egrette and Calabos were taken away and beaten this morning!” the boy yelled. “Malachi might never walk again! You could have stopped all that, Grimmil!”

Grimmil was quiet for a moment. “They...they might have killed me!” He was plaintive.

“They might have killed any of us. In fact, they did. They killed people I’ve known my whole life. And they were ready to do it again at any time.” There was a conspicuous drop in volume as he continued. “Honestly, Grimmil. We’re farmers. Farmers and trappers and merchants. You’re a fighter. It was on you, and you failed.”

Kame didn’t look around. But that was the last he heard from any party, but for one word, muttered passionately below the young man’s breath.  
“Coward.”

Forward, back. Forward, back.

The prisoners were gone from his line of sight now. Kame could hear Mal talking to them.

“Make for the township of Lackwater, with haste,” the mage said. “Inform the Baroness Ross that the Gnomes of Gnome Company are coordinating a final and decisive strike that will no doubt win the day.”

Mirra sat down next to Kame.  
  
“Hey,” she said.  
  
He didn’t look at her.

“You did what you had to do,” she said. “Those people are free now. They wouldn’t have been, if you hadn’t.”

He mumbled.

“What?” said Mirra, leaning in closer.

“I said, I don’t like to hurt people,” he repeated.

“Might be in the wrong game,” said Granna, poking an unconscious body.

Mirra smiled, lightly. “I know, Kame. Nobody likes hurting people.”

“I do,” Granna offered, looting the aforementioned body. 

“But you know, those Kobolds?” Mirra continued quickly. “You couldn’t have talked them out of it. They would have fought you to the death no matter what you said. They were slavers. Slavers don’t just stop being slavers. They’ve already made up their minds about what they are.”

Kame peeked out from behind his arms. “You can’t know that,” he said.

“I can and I do,” said Mirra. “I’ve fought slavers before. Kressek knew that, too. It’s why she sent us. She didn’t want to see her tribe turn into that. Hell, she probably knows these Kobolds personally. She condemned them, knowing what they’d turned into.”  
  
She subsided a bit. “It’s a hard truth, Kame,” she said, “but sometimes it’s the case that you can only save some by destroying others. If you hadn’t acted, you’d be complicit in the death and suffering of the people we freed here today.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I refuse to believe that not everyone can be saved,” he said.

But he stood up.

It was a testament to how low he was feeling, Kame reflected, that so horrible a notion as that could be a comfort to him.

“...Guys?” said Granna. She had found a ring of keys, and was peeking through a doorway in the end of the room opposite the entry tunnel they’d entered by. It had a little porthole the size of a dinner plate, which had thick steel bars across it. “I don’t think this is over.”


	8. Nighttail and Maw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gnome Company finds an unexpected ally in the depths of the Kobold tunnels,

Beyond the door was a darker, danker hallway. There were a number of thick oak doors. They all had bars in them.   


It was a prison.   


And it smelled...bad.

“Granna,” Kame said. “Can you pick one of these?”

“You done weeping on the floor?” she asked, sifting through a pouch of burglary tools.

He shrugged. “Sure! For now.”

Granna upside-down smiled again, and set to work on the door.

\---

After a moment, and with a rusty clack, the door creaked open.

The smell got worse. It smelled familiar, but Kame couldn’t place it. He couldn’t place it, describe it, or stand it.

“Ugh,” Granna muttered. “Smells like DEEP fried ass.”

“Huh, you know, it does,” Kame said.

Usually agreeing with people made them happy, but this only seemed to upset her.

The chamber beyond the dungeon door was large and dark. No one had bothered to light it. Mal brought his magical light to bear, and there appeared to be a figure standing in the center, atop a mound of earth. No, wait...Not earth.

“Ewwww,” Kame said.

“ _ Chakrat! _ ” came a hoarse Kobold voice. “Who goes there?”

Mal held the lighted stick up to the figure in the center. It was, indeed, a Kobold, a very tall and broad Kobold, blinking and irritable in the sudden fluorescence, with chains all down her body connected to a ring clasped tightly around her neck and staked into the ground at the far end, her moldy tunic thoroughly smeared with...with...um, it’s not important what she was smeared with.

The important takeaway is, someone REALLY didn’t want this Kobold to go anywhere, and they didn’t want her to be happy about that.

With a squint, she seemed to finally manage to focus on the group. “Are you...Gnomes?” she asked, incredulous. Her Common was better than Kressek’s.

“Yup! You betcha!” Kame chirped.

“Back to his old self, I see,” Granna muttered, sounding unhappy, although Kame couldn’t imagine why she’d feel that way, so he’d probably just heard wrong.

“What is your name, stranger?” he said easily.

What followed was a string of consonants that sounded as if someone had taken the scientific name of some obscure tropical mold, dropped it into a meat grinder, and tried to sew it back into a recognizable word when it came out the other end.

“Uh,” Kame said. “Didn’t catch that.”

The Kobold sighed, her heavy chains clinking slightly. “It means ‘Nighttail’ in the Old Kobold tongue,” she said, wearily.

“Nighttail,” said Mal.

“Nighttail,” said Mirra. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“What are you doing here, Nighttail?” Kame asked pleasantly.

She narrowed her eyes. Well, more. They were still squinting, adjusting to the light. “I might ask you the same thing. You, who have on you the blood of Kobolds.”

Kame looked down. There were spots of red on his shirt, from the heads and snouts of those he had incapacitated in his mad rush to free the enslaved Lackwaterers. He felt a pang, deep in his abdomen, as if his stomach were suddenly slowly turning rotisserie-style over a cooking fire.

Sensitively, Mal stepped up.

“One might be forgiven, my good reptilian woman,” Mal said, “for questioning your loyalties to this clan, given your current state of apparent extreme chastisement.”

Nighttail curled her scaly lip. “Well, ‘one’ would be gravely mistaken. I am a patriot. I am giving my life for my clan.”

“You’re chained up from head to toe! And covered in...in…”

“ _ Plonk _ ,” she said.

Kame squirmed.

“That’s what it’s called, little one,” she said.

“I know,” Kame said. “I speak Draconic. I just...do you have say it? It’s so crude.”

She rolled her eyes. “I was caught trying to save my brethren by killing the one who would destroy my home from within.”

“Zuggok,” Kame said.

Nighttail blinked. “You know of him?”

“Yes. He’s your Wyrm.”

She snarled. “Not my Wyrm. He is no leader of mine.”

“Granna?” Kame said.  
  
She nodded and started working at the locks around Nighttail’s legs, taking care not to touch anything.

“What are you doing?” Nighttail asked suspiciously.

Kame walked up the massive  _ plonk _ -pile and tried to look the Kobold warrior in the eyes. It wasn’t easy. She was quite a bit taller than him, and she had the high...ground.

“We were asked to come here by one called Kressek,” he said. “She’s a...a new friend. She asked us to help her get rid of Zuggok.”

As soon as Kressek’s name came out of his mouth, Nighttail looked thoughtful. Kame could see the wheels turning in her mind.

“Friends with Kressek, eh?” she said. “And what friendship vow did you ask of her?”

“That she not attack the town of Lackwater to the south, as she was ordered to by Zuggok.”

The Kobold barked loudly. Kame suddenly realized that it had been a laugh.

“Oh, he  _ would _ ,” she said. “That’s just exactly his way.”

She snickered again, and looked at Granna with what could only be described as warmth. “Very well, then! We shall be allies, and fulfill your friendship debt to the ranger Kressek together!”

“Great! We’re all gonna be good fr--” 

Mirra put her hand over Kame’s mouth.  
“He meant ‘allies’,” she said.

“There is but one difficulty,” she said. Silence, even from Granna and her jangly work. “If we’re going to meet the Wyrm in open battle...we’re going to need help from someone.”  
  
It was not in Kame’s nature to feel suspicion, but he felt a quiver of it now, as Granna resumed work freeing their new friend.

“...Whom?” he asked.

Her eyes glittered with excitement in the darkness.  
  
“Maw,” she said.

They crept out of that  _ plonk _ -filled chamber as fast as they could or faster. Nighttail said she knew where her effects were kept -- her armor and weapons. Which was good, because the Gnomes found it frankly very difficult to walk next to her, smelling the way she did.

She was almost too weak to stand, after several days without food or water, weighed down under chains and unable to sit or lay. Kame offered her some of their salted rations, and free rein of his waterskin, which she gratefully accepted. After a couple of minutes, she felt strong enough to set out and find her personal belongings.

It was another door off the hallway. This one was unlocked, and luckily there were no Kobolds guarding it. 

Mirra asked their new ally why no one had checked on her, why they weren’t elbow deep in Kobold guards right now. Nighttail said that she wasn’t sure, but thought it might have something to do with Carvonyx, the new God that Zuggok had introduced to the Blood Vow clan. Zuggok was planning something, she asserted, and while she didn’t know what, she knew it wasn’t going to be any good.

Besides, she said, there wouldn’t be any checking on  _ her _ . They’d left her to die. The only checking they’d have been doing would be to remove her corpse in a couple weeks’ time.

Nighttail found her items wrapped in a bundle under the desk. It was a small miracle, she said, that no one had thrown them out yet, or stolen them. Some ancestor was smiling up at her from the Deeps.

Mirra was going to ask her if she wanted privacy, but she had already shucked off her sodden and foul prisoner’s tunic, and began pulling on the leather armor in her pack. It wasn't like she had anything of particular interest to look at under there, anyway, Mirra noted, shrugging at no one in particular. She was a reptile. 

Her modesty restored, Nighttail took a swing of the spectacular curved sword that had come with the armor. She seemed to feel a lot better, now that she had her things back. At least, she was showing her teeth…

“Now,” she said. “Maw.”

The Gnomes backtracked to the  _ plonk _ -filled chamber, but took a right this time. The cell across the hallway...the door was beefier. It was at least ten feet tall, and made of steel.

Nighttail stopped well before the door, and stood there staring at it. Mirra felt the overwhelming urge to clear her throat, but realized that would be a potentially disastrous lack of diplomacy within this dangerous and tenuous new relationship...so she waited for Granna do it instead.  
  
The Kobold paid no mind. Instead, she turned to the party with a look of barely concealed anger and fear, and said, “I swear, if they’ve harmed so much as a _scale_ on his head...” and left the rest to the imagination.

Mirra had a very good imagination. She shuddered.

Nighttail strode forth, key in hand, arm outstretched. She unlocked the door, with some difficulty. It was a really big, really thick steel lock, and…

A sudden worry made itself known to Mirra.

Had they ever actually confirmed that Maw was another Kobold?

“Nighttail, what exactly IS--” she only just thought to ask.  
  
But Nighttail was gone, into a chamber exactly as pitch-dark as hers had been.

“Mal,” Mirra said, “We need you up front with your light on.” Then she pulled him in close as he strode by. “And maybe get a missile prepared,” she whispered.

The magical torch lit up the room, but not nearly enough. It was a large chamber, and Mal’s light was more of a dim glow, less like a flame than an ember in intensity.

But something was definitely moving in the back of the chamber.  
  
Something a lot bigger than a Gnome or a Kobold.

Cautiously, they stepped into the chamber. It was heavy on all mammalian minds present that Nighttail could have easily lied, and double-crossed them, and that their death by ambush lay straight ahead of them.

Kame laughed. “Nighttail? Where’d you go? We can’t see you!” he said cheerily, like she was just being a silly old bloodthirsty lizard monster.

It was heavy on  _ almost _ all of their minds.

Something was breathing, roughly, expansively, and Mirra thought she could hear whispering.

“Kame,” Mirra said quietly, “Does...does the word ‘Maw’ mean anything in Draconic?”

“Oh!” he said. “I know this. I remember this. It means, uh…”  
  
He paused. Something was moving toward them, in the deep dark.

Granna drew her weapons. “Holy gods,” she murmured.

It moved into the circle of Mal’s mystical firelight.

They looked up.  
  
When they were done looking up, they looked further up.

“It means, ‘baby’,” Kame said, awestruck.

“That’s a drake,” Mirra said.

It was. Perhaps five or six feet tall at the shoulder, it was young, but it was a drake. It stood on two legs ending in massive talons, with long, cruel-looking claws in the front. Its neck was long, and skinnier than the muscled necks of its adult brethren, and its skin was a muddy pale green. It was coated head-to-toe in what appeared to be fine, downy hairs, but which Mirra knew from her reading to actually be very tiny feathers. An onlooker could be forgiven for thinking that they were looking at a small dragon, though even the brightest drake was still just an animal, while a dragon was a fiendish intelligence to rival, or more frequently dominate, any Gnome’s.

Its jaws were large enough to swallow any one of them whole.

It regarded them with a bird-like intensity, and Mirra found herself wondering when the last time it had eaten was.

“Don’t worry,” Nighttail said from atop Maw’s back. “He won’t attack unless I tell him to.”

“Reassuring,” trembled Granna, not reassured.  
  
A sound escaped from Kame the like of which Mirra had never heard come out of a sentient lifeform before. He ran up to the creature, which seemed to alarm it a little. “Here, buddy!” he said, and she realized he was holding a massive wad of dried meat, probably from a week’s worth of rations.

Maw sniffed it cautiously, then licked a corner of the wad. Finally, he grabbed the whole wad in his massive jaws and tossed his head back, swallowing it whole. He then started snuffling and searching all up and down Kame’s body for more food -- which apparently tickled, because Kame started giggling like the world’s ugliest schoolgirl.

Nighttail didn’t seem too pleased, and jabbed Maw in the sides with her heels. He obediently backed off.

“Aw,” said Kame.

“I found Maw’s egg in a nest while ranging far to the North,” said Nighttail, smacking the beast fondly on its flank. “The rest had been smashed. I imagine whomever profaned the nesting grounds merely missed him.”

“My studies have hitherto never indicated the presence of drakes on this continent,” said Mal, suspiciously.

“Mine, neither,” Mirra said. “They’re pretty much hunted, even in their home lands. I guess they’re not great for cattle ranchers.”

“I have looked him up in some of your mammalian texts,” Nighttail said, hopping down. “He’s of a species that is known as an ‘Antrodemus’.

“Ah, yes,” said Mal, “That explains the chromatic reticulation along the spinal ridge.

“Yeah,” Mirra said, “And the carpal articulation that distinguishes the genus from  _ Guiveridae _ .”

Mal glared back. “Well, did you notice the massive sagittal crest?”

“No, I was busy noting the signature dorsal scutes.”  
  
“Are they arguing?” Nighttail asked, nonplussed.

“Oh, no, no,” said Kame, waving his hand dismissively.  
  
“Yes,” said Mal and Mirra together.

“Wow, guys,” said Granna, “You’re embarrassing us in front of Nighttail.”

Mirra noticed movement back toward the entrance. Pigglevitch and Willow were spreading out their bedrolls. She walked over, while everyone else kept bickering.  
  
“Guys,” Mirra said, “what are you doing?”

Willow averted her eyes.

“Long rest,” said Pigglevitch. “We’re tired.”

Mirra scoffed, which made her sound more like Mal than she was happy with. “You can’t just camp in the middle of a prison cell,” she said...but even as she said it, she was thinking about it. No one was going to come and check on Nighttail and Maw, at least not according to her (and if there was any question about whether Nighttail was planning to doublecross them, they pretty much ended when she mounted Maw, who could have eaten four of them before the other two could even respond). They had provisions, and a sturdy thick door that was easy to defend if anyone did discover them. They even had Maw, who could be turned into food should a siege situation arise, although she was keeping that thought to herself.

Most importantly, they hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours. So in point of fact, upon examination, Pigglevitch’s proposal sounded pretty damn tantalizing.

Not that her input mattered. Pigglevitch just said, “And yet,” climbed into his bedroll, and was snoring within seconds.   
  
Mirra identified with that.

“All right,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Let’s rest up a bit. Let things die down out there.” She turned to Nighttail. “I bet you could use some time to recover, right?”

Nighttail wasn’t listening. She was trying to get Kame off of Maw’s back.  
  
Mirra rolled her eyes. Yeah.


	9. Long Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment of respite -- Gnome Company gets to know each other a little better.

Mal lit a magical fire to keep them warm in the subterranean cold -- _because apparently that’s all I’m needed for these days_ , he thought grumpily. 

He did everything grumpily. He slept, ate, and even smiled grumpily.

This was another one of his fire spells -- it emitted heat, but no smoke and very little light. It required organic matter -- which, thanks to the beast Maw, there was plenty of -- and generally some sort of small fence to stop people from walking into it. He placed a ward around the makeshift fire pit to stop it from spreading and consuming them all in the night.

Given the nature of the evening thus far, and seeing as how they were on an extended mission out beyond unfriendly lines, it was no wonder that most of them were unable to sleep so easily as Pigglevitch and young Willow, and Mal, who had the luxury of being able to cast himself to sleep.

Nighttail had agreed to take watch. Apparently, Kobolds could go many days without rest. But the other Gnomes could practically feel the cortisol oozing through the ports and channels of their bodies as they jumped at every sound, straining to hear any distant evidence of impending reptilian doom. They found relaxation to be...challenging.

Mirra was asking Kame why he knew Draconic.

“Oh,” said Kame. “I know a bunch of languages. Draconic. Goblin. Infernal.”

“I’m noticing a recurring theme, Kame,” said Mirra. “No Elvish? Dwarvish? Human?”

“Eh,” he said. “Elves and Dwarves and Humans have pretty much got things figured out. They live in cities together, have these whole integrated societies together. And sure, they have their problems, but for the most part they seem able to work things out. The others, though.” He paused, and shook his head morosely. “They hang around at the fringes, hating each other and everyone else. They never get anything done, because they’re too busy fighting and killing each other. The Kobolds stay in tight-knit clans and never interact with the outside world if they can avoid it. Trolls pretty much only care about whatever other creatures they can eat. And Goblins hate learning, and kill any of their own suspected of being able to read.” He scoffed. “Can you imagine? They are violently against _knowing things_.”

He sighed. “It must be such a lonely way to live. They seem like they could really use a friend.”

Mirra was quiet for a moment. She seemed to be examining his words. Suddenly, she came to a realization.

“Kame,” she said, “are you saying that you learned all these languages just so you could be friends with Goblins and Kobolds and Trolls?”

“Well, yeah. Why else would I learn them?”

“Yes, but -- Infernal? The language of the Hells?”

“Who could use a friend more than a demon?”

Mirra shook her head, aghast.

“I just don’t get it. You could just be friends with other Gnomes. Or Halflings,” she added, self-consciously.

“If you want to shine a light, it doesn’t make sense to do it in the middle of a brightly lit room,” said Kame. “You look for the dark corners.”

That was the last that could be heard from that side of the room.

Across the way, Granna and Nighttail were having a different sort of conversation.

“And you’re _certain_ ,” Granna said flatly, “that he won’t flip out and eat us in the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” said Nighttail, as Maw snored restfully, oblivious in his animal simplicity to the anxieties around him. “He’s an obedient boy, even when hungry. Besides,” she continued sheepishly, “He, uh...ate a lot the day we were arrested.”

“Ha ha,” said Granna. “Nice.”

For a while, there was only the sound of the slight fizzing of the lightless fire, and some snoring. It seemed that Kame and Mirra had finally nodded off.

“You know,” said Nighttail quietly. “You don’t smell quite right. I mean, you can pass off the look, but there’s not a whole lot you can do to disguise the smell. I don’t suppose you feel the need to try, travelling with Gnomes and all.”

Silence reigned.

“They don’t know, I assume?” said Nighttail.

“...No,” said Granna. “And I’d take it as a kindness if--”

“Right, right, yes, yes, of course,” said the reptilian.

There was more silence. “I should. I should get to bed,” said Granna. There was an element to her voice that was seldom heard. A quietness.

Granna yawned, and stretched, in a way that was definitely not inspired by weariness, and made muffled excuses as she unpacked her bedroll and settled in. There was quiet for a few seconds, and then--

“They’ll never accept you, you know,” Nighttail said quietly.

“Yeah,” Granna sighed. “I know.”

And that was it, for a long time.

Mal awoke, long before anyone else. Sleep spells were good at getting the slumber ball rolling, but were unreliable for a full night’s rest. There was no telling if one would wake up in fifteen minutes or five hours. 

It was still dark, of course, but it was cold -- the lightless fire must have been wearing out; the very faint glow that had suffused the room was waning. A few hours must have passed.

He blinked in the darkness. His eyes were about as well-adjusted as one could expect, sequestered in their lids for as long as they had been. Even so, the darkness was nearly total, and it took him a moment to work out what had woken him up.

_Shik. Shik._

The sound of stone on metal, quiet, somewhere in the cave. Repetitive.

_Shik. Shik. Shik._

Suddenly, out of the corner of Mal’s eye, right in time with the noise, there was a tiny spark. Over by where he knew Nighttail and Maw had made their spot for the evening.

He focussed until his eyes watered.

Maw was still asleep, of this he was sure. His saurian snores were not loud, but they had presence, issuing as they did from lungs that were each of them larger than Mal’s bedroll.

But Nighttail was awake and propped up against Maw’s fuzzy flank. And she was sharpening her scimitar on a flat whetstone, rhythmically and with purpose, with a very intense look on her face, indecipherable to one of Mal’s evolutionary heritage.

Staring at where the Gnomes lay sleeping.

After a little while, when her blade was sharpened to her apparent satisfaction, she sheathed it, and turned onto her side, using her drake as the world’s largest pillow.

Mal didn’t go back to sleep, however. He couldn’t shake this sensation, this sour bile in the pit of his stomach, this effusive miasma creeping from his gut, up his spine, and into the back of his head, washing up and through and back like a hot tide that left him cold and shivering when it left.

Mal didn’t have any other way to describe it.


	10. Zuggok's Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing deeper into Zuggok's lair, Gnome Company and Nighttail make a morbid discovery.

Granna had a bad feeling about this.

She woke up to yelling, which was not a good sign, generally. It was Kobold in nature, and it was outside of the cell. Granna, personally, didn’t speak Kobold, but it sounded like it was coming from down the hall in the vicinity of Nighttail’s old cell, so it didn’t take a Mirra to figure out what had happened. They  _ had  _ come and checked. Someone was a little nervous about Nighttail’s continued existence. And having discovered her missing, it didn’t take a Mal to work out where they would be heading next.

It was still darker than night in Maw’s chamber. Granna called out lightly to the others -- some clearly awake, some not. Man, Kame could sleep through anything. She had to whack him a little.  
  
Well, ‘had to’ might be an overstatement.

Granna whispered to everyone but Maw and Nighttail to make their way over to the door. Surprisingly, they followed, in varying states of wakefulness.

“Lure them in,” Granna whispered to Nighttail, who nodded curtly.

The Gnomes made for the door, and crouched below and to either side of the door frame. 

A hush followed. Shortly, they could hear every scrape and footfall of the small group of Kobolds who made their way, fearfully, to Maw’s cell.

The door opened, slowly, tentatively. With it came light -- blinding light, to those who had sat in total darkness for six hours or more. Granna couldn’t see the invaders, wouldn’t be able to for as long as they carried their torches.

Their caution would be the party’s undoing, she thought -- the Kobolds were one nervous sweep from discovering a whole parcel of crouching Gnomes less than ten feet from where they stood.

Just then, Maw roared.

It was a stringy, shrieky sort of thing, like a halfway point between the call of a bird of prey and the bellow of an angry brown bear. One day, it would be a roar that could be heard for miles, but for now it was just frightening enough to make the Kobolds drop all pretense of caution, and that was all Granna cared about. One of them, the presumptive leader, called out something in Draconic.

“They said Maw is too dangerous to live, and they need to kill him,” Kame translated in a furtive whisper. The Kobold soldiers were already charging out across the cell, spears raised.

The Gnomes slipped through the doors as soon as they were clear of the Kobolds -- Granna was shocked that the rumbling of Pigglevitch’s mysterious case didn’t immediately alert the Kobolds that there were escapees behind them.

Of course, they didn’t need to be listening for wobbly wheels. Not when Kame was a person who existed.

“Watch out, Nighttail!” he cried, like she wasn’t paying attention to the half-dozen armed lizard men bearing down on her.

Granna buried her face in her hands.

In fairness, it did work. The Kobolds, who were about ten feet from reaching the baby drake and his Kobold rider, skidded to a stop when they heard Kame’s voice (at least one of them falling directly over and sliding several feet, which, Granna reflected, would have been hilarious under any other circumstances) and whipped around to face this hitherto unknown threat.

Which gave Maw and Nighttail the opportunity to bowl straight through them, sustaining no injury from the spears. Granna definitely heard bone crack as Maw’s massive talon came down on the leg of a fallen Kobold, prompting some truly impressive reptilian shrieking from the owner of the limb.

She eyed Kame lightly. If she hadn’t known the absolute creme puff that was Kame, she would’ve sworn he’d planned that. 

He caught Granna looking at him, and smiled ineffably.

With another baby dino roar, Maw and Nighttail were through the door and past the Gnomes. They heaved, pushing on the door with all their might. They had it closed and latched by the time any of the Kobolds inside got even close to it.   
  
Granna grinned mischievously.

“Hey, Kame,” she whispered. “How do you say, ‘bye, losers’ in Draconic?”

Kame regarded her woodenly for a second. “ _Drok mo thir_ ,” he said.  
  
Granna cackled, and slid home the padlock that they’d pulled off the night before, locking it in place.

“ _ Drok mo thir!” _ she yelled through the bars.

“Why did you just say ‘A thousand pardons my esteemed brothers?’” Nighttail asked from atop her mount.

Granna sighed. ”Dammit, Kame,” she said.

“We have to move fast,” said Nighttail.  
  
“This isn’t fast?” Mal gasped, clutching his ribs.

Young Maw might have been, but his body was at least sixty percent leg. He was a bit hard to keep up with, and everyone was trying.  
  
Well, except for Pigglevitch. The party was beginning to learn by this point not to rush Pigglevitch. He’d fallen behind, pulling out his big black case and walking at a generally respectable, but in this case wholly inappropriate, pace.

_ Hey, it’s his life, not mine _ , Granna thought.

“Which way are we going?” Mirra called.

“Just stay close and follow behind me!” Nighttail called, already unnecessarily far ahead.

They thundered out through the dungeon tunnels, the workroom where someone had cleaned up the Kobolds of the night before, and into the network of earthen general use tunnels beyond. Granna tried to glance over at Kame, to see if he was having any kind of reaction to being back in the place of his massive outburst the day before, but he was just smiling warmly and nonspecifically at everything he saw.

_ Weirdo _ , she thought.

The tunnels tipped decidedly downward. Soon, the way opened up into a darkened chamber with far less torchlight than it needed.  
  
There were subterranean pools in the center. Bioluminescent fungi in the bottom lit the water an eerie pale green, projecting neon ripples on the stone walls and ceiling. Granna tried to watch where she was going, but she found her eye inexorably drawn to the center of the pool.

In spite of the light, there were large dark patches in the depths of the water. Very large dark patches. And, with a start, Granna realized they were moving.

Nighttail and Maw had slowed down to a more reasonable pace. The Kobold rebel must have seen Granna looking. “Stay away from the edge,” she said.

“W-why?” Granna asked, and then, reddening, she cleared her throat and repeated herself, louder, more confident, daring any of her fellow Gnomes to comment on the fact that she’d stuttered.

Nighttail bared her teeth in what was either a grin or a grimace. It was frankly hard to tell, but the connotations of either were frightening. 

“Zuggok’s pets,” she said, ominously.

“Why did we slow down?” asked Kame.

“You’re complaining?” wheezed Mal, bent double.

“Maw smelled something,” Nighttail murmured, only half-paying attention. “Something he didn’t like.”

One could have heard a pin drop, but for the sloshing of the pools.

From somewhere in the deep darkness of the corner of the room, there was a tiny cough.

Nighttail dismounted, and led young Maw away from the pools. She then gave him a command that exercised her tonsils and expelled some phlegm, which, Granna figured, meant something along the lines of ‘stay’.

The Kobold peered into the gloom.

“Magic Gnome,” she called gravely.

The look on Mal’s face at being thusly addressed made Granna a memory that would keep her warmer than a lightless fire on cold nights for decades hence. He grumbled some, but he lit his little piece of wood and walked forward.

And revealed a horror that chilled Granna to the bone.

“Nighttail,” Granna said, after a long moment.  
  
Nighttail was silent.

“Nighttail, how many Kobolds are there in the Blood Vow clan?”

She found her voice. “About...about a hundred,” she stammered.

Granna whistled.

Inside the little nook at the corner of the room, dozens of Kobolds lay, in all positions, in all directions, coated in blood, and very,  _ very _ dead.

Nighttail looked at the Gnomes, fire in her dragon eyes.  
  
“HE did this,” she rasped.

The cough came again and this time, they saw who it was. Not every Kobold in the pile was quite dead yet. Away on the left, an elderly Kobold in bloodstained ceremonial robes was lolling his head from side to side.

Mirra ran to him, and put water to his scaly lips - because that’s what you do when confronted with a dying person -- you put water in them. Kame broke out his battlefield healing kit and set about examining the Kobold’s wounds.  
  
“Flok,” said Nighttail, gazing at the fallen Kobold in awe and anger. “High Priest of Dameron, our clan’s old...our clan’s god.”

The elderly Kobold drank, but not very deeply. When Mirra moved away, though, his claw darted out and caught her, softly, by the arm. 

“Gnome,” he said, and coughed weakly.

“I’m not a--” Mirra began.

“Gods, Mirra,” Granna snapped. 

Mirra cleared her throat, embarrassed. “Yes?” she tried again, a bit primly.

Flok’s eyes seemed to have trouble focusing, and he had to fight to stop them from rolling up into his skull. “He...did this,” he said, quietly.  
  
“Zuggok?” Mirra said, kindly.

Flok nodded. “Last night...he took the Kobolds who defied him. Or who...he thought...defied him.”

He swallowed hard. “They come every few hours now,” he said, “and throw some bodies into Zuggok’s pools.”

Nighttail growled lowly behind them, and the Gnomes became, collectively, acutely aware that she was neither Gnome, nor Human, nor Elf, nor anything of any familiar species, but something of an entirely different lineage. Growls like that belonged in the deep of the night.

“Is there anything you can do?” Mirra asked Kame, who had straightened up and was wringing his hands.

“I...he’s lost too much blood,” Kame said sadly. He thought for a moment. “Plus organs aren’t supposed to be on the outside like that.”

Granna stared at the bloodsoaked robes and shuddered.

Flok coughed again, though this one was more of a gurgle. He tried to pull Mirra in again, but didn’t have the strength. She leaned in of her own accord.

“The...the beast,” Flok said, weakly. “Carvonyx. He is no God. He is a devil.”

He passed out. Possibly all the way out.

Silence ruled the room.

Nighttail growled again.

“Zuggok will--”

But the Gnomes never found out what Zuggok would do -- probably pay for this, although who knows where Nighttail's poetic license might have taken her -- because just then there was a sound from the room with the underground pools behind them.  
  
It was the sound of a lot of Kobolds yelling.   
  
And a splash.


	11. The Cavalry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Gnome Company infiltrates the Blood Vow Kobold nest, Grimmil has a crisis of conscience back in Lackwater.
> 
> Sorry, I had session zero for a new game I'm running last Monday and totally forgot to upload T-T so I'll do a double upload today

Grimmil had gone to town like the rest of the former slaves, just like the bearded Gnome told him to. It didn't take them long to escape the Kobold tunnels. There was absolutely no resistance as they walked out, and they soon found themselves in a part of the woods that some of the Lackwater natives found familiar, and headed toward where the town lay.

Grimmil walked ten feet behind everyone else.

When the freedmen arrived at the gate to the little walled city, they were greeted by the guards. And once they saw familiar faces, they let the little crowd in without issue, and pulled them aside as they entered the city to be questioned. 

A headcount was taken. A list of the missing was brought out. Most had made it back, and those who hadn’t, well, there were those among the crowd who knew why. Only some local rancher by the name of Alden Shaw and his wife Mayleen seemed to be unaccounted for -- no one had seen them in the Kobold lair. Perhaps they didn’t make it through the capture.

There was much next-of-kin notification.

Soon, people's families began trickling in. There were hugs, and screams, and a lot of crying.

No one came for Grimmil.

The guards pulled him aside, specifically. He was the only one with no connection to Lackwater, having been captured before he’d ever done more than look upon its walls. So he was the one they could interrogate without worrying about family and friends mobbing their way into the room and insisting he be taken away for tea and rest and favorite snacks.

 _Lucky me,_ he thought.

A tall, wide Human with a big red face brought Grimmil to a quiet stone room with naught but a table and a stool occupying it. A human stool, too. He could barely see over the table. Big folk.

He left Grimmil there for a while, alone with his thoughts, which were very, very loud.

Finally, he returned, a piece of parchment on a clipboard in his hands. He sat down across from the Gnome.

His eyes scanned the document, lips moving as he read. It seemed to take an awfully long time.

Finally, the broad man looked at Grimmil. His eyes narrowed.

“Here,” he said, voice dripping with affectation, “Ain't you a Gnome?”

Grimmil looked down at himself. He was three foot seven inches tall and had pointed ears.

“I mean, yeah,” he said.

He considered saying something smart-mouthed, but decided against it. It would definitely not help the situation, and anyway he wasn't in the mood.

“Hey,” said the man. “That's enough with the smart mouth.”

Grimmil guessed the bar was pretty low for ‘smart’ in this room.

The sheriff asked Grimmil his name, and what had happened to lead up to his enslavement by the Blood Vow Kobolds -- so the diminutive monk spun the tale right from when he left the monastery to the moment he was brought in through the gates of Lackwater. The sheriff wrote all the while, slowly, deliberately, a little bit of pink tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He concluded right as Grimmil finished, and put his clipboard down on the table.

Grimmil couldn't help but notice that all the man had written was his name.

“Sorry,” the sheriff lied, “Can you just repeat that last bit?”

Grimmil raised his eyebrows. “... Which bit?”

“The bit after your name,” he said.

Grimmil stared at him.

The sheriff glared back.

“That'll do for now, Hill,” came a smoky voice from the door behind the Gnome.

Grimmil turned. A noblewoman, dressed practically but presenting no illusions about her status, leaned in the doorway, looking a strange mix of concerned and amused. She was likely in her forties or fifties, but seemed to have a youthful energy about her. Grimmil wondered how long she’d been standing there.

She strode into the room and stood beside the man, who, Grimmil figured, was named Hill. Hill stood up as she approached.

“Lord Mayor, I have to protest. This Gnome is a witness and is potentially involved with--”

“This young man, Hill, is a victim of slavers. He deserves our respect and compassion. We have no reason to believe he's involved in any way.”

Hill grumbled.

“Now,” said the lady, “I believe that I heard on the way in that young Deputy Kahl requires your signature on a form or two. Why don't you go ahead and see to that, my good man?”

Begrudgingly, and with many a suspicious backward glance, Hill departed.

“There,” she said, taking Hill's place on the stool across from Grimmil. “That should buy us a half hour or so.”

Grimmil instantly liked her.

“My name is Lady Ross, the Baroness of Lackwater. I caught the end of your thrilling tale there, but was hoping you wouldn't mind running through it one more time, so I can hear it from the start.”

He did exactly that.

She nodded and looked shocked in all the right places, and generally made him feel listened to. When he got to the part about the Kobolds, though, her face went stony and stayed there. And when she mentioned the Gnomes who rescued them, she looked downright alarmed.

“So,” she said. “It was the Blood Vow Kobolds who destroyed the Black Tower all along. I might have known.”

Grimmil waited politely.

“If what?” he prompted.

Lady Ross came back to this world. “What?” she said, as if noticing him for the first time.

“You might have known it was the Kobolds if what?”

She stared at the Gnome.

Suddenly she stood up, hastily making for the door. “I have to tell the captain of the militia, and send word to Kronsfeld. This will mean war.”

“War!?” Grimmil cried.

But he was talking to a closed door.

\---

He peeked out of the little interrogation room. It took him a minute to work up the nerve, until he realized he was still in a bit of a prisoner headspace, fearing repercussion for any self-motivated act, nervous to move without being told to. 

He also realized, just for a moment, that thinking like a prisoner wasn’t so different from the way he had always thought, from the day he first came to the monastery as a boy.

But he didn’t have time to unpack that, and instead elected to stride out into the busy office, his head held high, relatively speaking.

Lady Ross was at the center of a flurry of activity. A young dwarf secretary was beside her, furiously scribbling down a message that the baroness was dictating from the top of her head. Lady Ross herself was also scribbling something down at the same time.

Grimmil approached her. “Lady Ross,” he said.

She looked up, but was immediately eclipsed by the quivering and wholly unnecessary frame of Hill, who had stepped between them with purpose.

“'Ey,” he said, because who needs aitches, “You can't just run up to the baroness willy-nilly-like!”

“Hill!” Lady Ross yelled, wearily. ”Gods, man, do I have to put a leash on you?”

Hill looked like he was ready to punch someone, and for some reason had decided it should be Grimmil. He moved aside, though.

Grimmil stepped forward.

“Lady Ross,” he said, “those Gnomes are still out there. They said they were planning to overthrow Zuggok, the Wyrm. He's the one who's responsible for the slave-taking. Most of the other members of the tribe, they hate him. They don't want anything to do with him.”

Lady Ross frowned. “You know this for certain?”

“I mean, I was a slave there,” he pointed out, trying to radiate confidence. “I overheard them talking. I don't think they were worried enough about my opinion to lie to me.”

The baroness looked thoughtful. 

“Tauga,” she said to the dwarf. “New letter. Tell the royal governor that we are currently providing aid in the power struggle of a local Kobold tribe. Ask him to stand by to respond to possible violent escalation. We'll send the other letter if they fail.”

Grimmil fought some rising dread.

“Um. What does the other letter say?” he asked.

The baroness looked him in the eye, and the coldness with which she spoke gave him the distinct impression that he was talking to the _real_ Lady Ross for the first time.

“The other letter asks him to send a flight of mages to obliterate the Blood Vow Tribe from the air, with heavy and sustained fire magics.”

\---

Grimmil couldn't sleep at all that night, which he didn't think was very fair, as he hadn't seen a bed in weeks.

The Finrics, a husband and wife merchant team who were among the rescued slaves, had offered him their guest bed, which was very kind of them. All the other freed slaves had homes to go to, but Grimmil was a visitor to these lands.

He kept tossing and turning, and his brain just wouldn't snuff out. How long would Lady Ross give before she sent a message to the capital and all of the Kobolds were killed -- which he wasn't actually super against -- and the Gnomes who had saved him along with them?

Also, every time he managed to relax, he got an itch somewhere new on his body. It was one of those nights.

What could anyone do in the situation? Logically, it was out of his hands. One can't be expected to step in and defy the word of those older, wiser, and more rightfully in charge than they are every time they had a little anxiety about the possible outcomes of their course of action. The world would be a nightmare. 

But something kept nagging at him, in the seldom-tread back of his mind.

Was it the word ‘coward’?

He knew what he had to do. He leapt out of bed and threw his robes on.

He was going to go help the adventurers.

\---

It took him until after dawn to find the entrance of the caves they’d escaped from yesterday nestled in a crevice at the bottom of a short cliff. Cautiously, watching for evidence of guards or lookouts, Grimmil crept in.

  
There was no such welcoming party for him. He thought they’d escaped awfully easily the night before, too. Something fishy was happening here...

He sped on, from room to room, hall to hall. No Kobolds...but then again, no Gnomes, either.   
  
Desperation soon started to overtake delicacy, and he found himself poking his head into room after room, regardless of the potential decapitation it entailed.

And then he found one room that made the rest make a little more sense.  
  
It was a brightly lit room of work benches, like the one he had been chained to, but this room was bigger, the benches far more numerous. And, most obviously, in this room the ones being forced to work were Kobolds.

They were a pathetic, wretched bunch of scales and dirt. Families were shackled together, complete with little tired-looking Kobold children, and all of them were working on…Knives. Broken cutlery, old rusted letter openers, repaired with any loose chunk of wood or any shiny scrap of metal they had on hand. This was no five star armorers’.

He pondered on the nature of what he was seeing. When the folk of Lackwater, and himself, were enslaved (less than twelve hours before, he couldn’t help but note) they had mostly been forced to repair armor. Enough to outfit the hundred or so individuals in the Blood Vow tribe, perhaps. But this...why enslave your own people to prepare so many third-rate little weapons?   
  
Were they exporting? Planning a fight?  
  
A war?

Grimmil had pondered for too long. Suddenly, he heard a gruff yell, in a language he just couldn’t understand, but which he recognized the nature of immediately.

The guards, for all that they were primarily watching those in the room to prevent them from getting out, had spotted him. They headed toward him at speed, and looked as if they wanted at the very least a word.

Likely not a polite word, either.

Oh gods. Oh gods.

He ran.

\---

He ran blindly through the tunnels for the second time in a day. Some rescue.

Gods, the Kobolds were fast. No matter what he did, how fast he moved, he couldn’t seem to shake them.

It was only as he entered a dark, lightly glowing area of the lower caves that they backed off a little. In retrospect, Grimmil would think later, he really should have examined that a little more as it happened, but he was concerned only with getting away. The thought that he should be looking out for things that were worse than Kobolds was not a thought ready to find traction in his panicking little brain.

  
Which is why he ran headlong into a dark chamber peering behind him to see how close his pursuers were getting.

And didn’t see the deep subterranean pools until it was too late. He tried to skid to a halt, but the stone was slick, and he slid right into a large, deep pool with a heavy _splash_.

The water shocked his body. The monks raised him on beans and leafy vegetables, in accordance with their pacifistic doctrine -- frankly, he didn't have much in the way of padding to keep him warm. He may have lost consciousness, if it hadn't been for what he saw on the way down, which kept him clinging to awareness like a mayfly to a pole in a storm..

He saw death, and it was swimming toward him.


	12. The Case of Pigglevitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmil meets up with Gnome Company -- and Pigglevitch finally reveals the contents of his mysterious case.

“Turtles!” Kame cried out. “They’re aDORable!”

The little Gnome monk from the other day -- Grimmil, Kame thought his name was? -- was writhing around and screaming, trying to avoid the attention of a handful of eight foot long, razor-beaked snapping turtles.  
Kame couldn’t imagine why. He could only figure it was like how when you give a little kid a puppy and they start crying because it’s _so cute_.

“Uh. Kame,” said Mal. “Mayhaps we’d best retrieve the young man, before--”  
  
The Kobolds rounded the corner, spears drawn and at the ready.  
  
“Oh, the Kobolds are here.” Kame waved. “Hi, Kobolds!”

Oddly, his overtures did not sway them, and they pointed their spears at the party.

“Ahem,” came a quiet voice from the doorway. It was not intrusive, yet something within its quality made the Kobolds hesitate and glance back the way they’d come.

It was Pigglevitch, standing before them at the entry to the turtle room. He’d finally caught up.

Very slowly, without taking his eyes off of the Kobolds, he leaned down.

And opened up his big black case.

Kame didn't know what he had been expecting, but it sure wasn't a ladder.

“An authentic Gnomish battle-ladder,” Mirra breathed, her eyes wide.

It was a folded stepladder, about three feet tall, dented and scratched. The top was heavy and dense, likely steel, and the sides near the top were sharpened. On the top step, there was a round insignia. It looked like a stein full of beer.

Long ago, as did every race, Gnomes fought wars against other groups, many of them considerably taller. Since the noble Gnomish warriors of old believed in honor on the battlefield, and that anyone worth killing was worth looking in the eye when you did so, there was a little bit of a height issue when the Gnomes did battle with the Humans or the Elves or the Orcs.

Thus the battle-ladder was born.

“Thank you for your attention,” Pigglevitch said, and swung the battle ladder upwards in an arc at the nearest Kobold's chin so hard that when it connected his feet left the ground.

The Kobolds rounded on Pigglevitch. Mal and Kame took the opportunity to yank Grimmil up and out of the pool of water like he was a net of wriggling fish, and onto the cold stone, where he lay gibbering and gasping, and bleeding slightly from the arm where he had been scraped by the razor-sharp beak of the dire turtle.

“ _ Augh, I’m dying _ ,” he shrieked, when he realized he was bleeding.

Kame gave Mal a quizzical look. They both just shrugged.

Pigglevitch swung hard at the next Kobold, knocking him into the wall, caught the third Kobold full in the face with the foot of the ladder on the back swing, and brought the ladder down so hard on the fourth and final Kobold's head that he ended up sandwiching it between the ladder and the cold, hard ground, in the space of about twelve seconds..

None of them got up afterwards.

There was silence as Pigglevitch carefully leaned his weapon against the wall and regarded Gnome Company.

“Also, I can use it to see over counters,” he said evenly.

Questions hung in the air, without the benefit of voices that had the wherewithal to make them heard, but the Gnomes suddenly detected the sound of more Kobolds approaching down the hall.

“Quick, hide!” Kame whispered. “Maybe they won't think to come in--”

Grimmil started screaming again. He'd just noticed Maw.

The Kobold shouting got louder, closer.

“Well, darn,” Kame concluded.


	13. The Wyrm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle with Wyrm Zuggok, leader of the Blood Vow Kobolds.

With Nighttail in the lead, they sped away through the tunnels. Kame pulled Grimmil along by the hand, because, he reasoned, the guy seemed like he could really use the physical contact. And he would have died if Kame didn’t.

“This way,” Nighttail called quietly, drawing Maw to a halt by a thick oak door. “We're very close.”

She dismounted, and cautiously cracked the door and peered through.

They waited pensively.

Finally, she turned from where the Gnomes watched, a serious expression on her face.

“There's a half dozen Kobolds in there,” she said. “The Wyrm's elite guard. And Zuggok.”

“What are they doing? Mirra asked.

“Packing the weapons and armor he's had everyone repairing into boxes,” she said, drawing her scimitar. “Preparing for war on Lackwater.”

She grimaced at the door. “This is going to be very bloody,” she said, and went to open it.

“Wait,” Kame said.

“What?”

His mind raced. There  _ had _ to be a way to do this without killing the innocent Kobolds. There had already been enough violence. 

A thought occurred to him, as his gaze incidentally met Mal's.

“You said Zuggok was the only one who had communed with or even seen this new god of his, right?”

Nighttail raised where her eyebrow would have been if she were a mammal. “Yes,” she said. “What of it?”

Kame grinned at Mal. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” he asked.

“Rarely, if at all,” said Mal, which Kame thought was an odd way to say ‘yes’.

He smiled at Nighttail, who looked confused and suspicious, but was listening, and had, quietly, shut the door.

“Tell me,” Kame said, “tell me everything there is to know about Carvonyx.”

\--

If you were an elite Kobold guard to Wyrm Zuggok of the Blood Vow tribe, the next few minutes might have gone something like this:

It's been a hard day! Zuggok has been on your case making you pack and pack and pack. You’re a warrior, not a laborer. This is not what you signed up for. Your hands are hurting, raw. But he's your Wyrm, and you’re his elite guard. So you bite back your bile and work.

You don't notice when the door cracks open, and the reptilian face of a certain attempted usurper peeks through. You don't notice the hastily whispered conversation just outside the door, which turns into a hastily whispered argument, which in the fullness of time becomes a hastily whispered begrudging acquiescence. You just keep on following the barked orders of your liege. You just keep on packing.

What you do notice, a few minutes later, is the creeping mist, seeping under the door like an evil spirit in the deep dark of midnight. Not right away, of course -- you are a dutiful lizardman, in spite of how vexing life in the Blood Vow tribe has been of late, and are paying close attention to your work. The corner of the Wyrm's personal quarters that houses the door is nearly completely obscured by the time you happen to cast a glance that way as you gather a load of empty boxes into your arms. 

You bark in alarm. Everyone else looks up. Lord Zuggok turns around.

What do you do? You're prepared, as an elite Kobold warrior, to charge into the jaws of death at a second's notice. You've been hardened in battle against enemies ranging from dire platypuses to Elven Paladins, not to mention the absolute gauntlet that is Kobold childhood. But mist? What do you do? Do you charge it? Do you fall back? Is it foolish to even do anything?

In that moment of panic and indecision, the voices begin.

Low at first. Whispers? Or far-off shouting? You don't know. You can't make out the words. You're not sure that they're words at all.

The room is almost full of mist. It sits heavy and warm in your reptilian nostrils, a stark contrast to the normally cold and biting subterranean dank. Lights flash, belying strange and twisted shadows around you. They might just be yours, and those of your fellow guards. Might.

You back away from your work, eyes darting here and there in the creeping obfuscation, looking for real movement, for an enemy to fight, for some way to make this stop.

Zuggok yells something, some instruction. You are far past being able to understand or comply.

And that’s when the real voice starts, the voice around which the other, smaller voices merely orbit like tiny satellite moons.

“ _BEWARE_ ,” the voice says, a deep and booming falsetto ringing out. “ _BEWARE THE FALSE PROPHET ZUGGOK! HE LEADS YOU ONLY TO DEATH AND RUIN! HARK! THE TRUE PROPHET OF CARVONYX APPROACHETH!_ ”  
  
You do not hear, in spite of your keen straining, the voice of the traitor Nighttail mumbling “‘Approacheth’? Really?” Although if you had, you’d surely agree with Kame that this was an unnecessarily hurtful little sarcasm.

You hear, rather than see, as the thick oak door you know lies somewhere beyond the eerie mists -- or does it? You're not sure anymore -- explodes inward, and feel in your gut well before you ever see the massive shape of a Kobold on drake-back silhouetted in the gloom.

Zuggok issues the order to attack. But you feel deep dread at the prospect of fighting for this Wyrm.

Because the truth is, a misty light show and a mysterious voice are one thing -- but more importantly, the voice is right. Where Zuggok led, only death and ruin had come to follow. Perhaps you’d lost family, or friends, or lovers to his sadistic whims. You’d certainly lost faces you’d known from the day you hatched -- the clan was not so very large, after all.

And that's why, when you and your brothers and sisters of the elite guard finally draw their implements of doom, it is Zuggok at whom you are looking.

That's what you might see, if you were an elite Kobold guard.

\--

Zuggok turned out to be a relatively diminutive Kobold, with a patchwork of white scars across his dark green flesh, and a peculiar pop-eyed cast to his expression that Granna referred to as ‘the crazy eyes’. He wore black armor that was clearly not of Kobold make. Kame wondered where he’d gotten it from.   
  
He wasn’t ready for this turn of events, it was clear from the moment the Gnomes entered. Visibility was still low, but they could see the shadows of half a dozen Kobolds closing in on one, blades drawn.

That was a good start.

Mal quickly dispelled the mist conjuration. It would still be some time before the mist cleared out, but at least it wouldn’t be getting any thicker.

“You know, I have to admit,” Mal said, sounding impressed, “it wasn’t a wholly daft notion, this ploy.”

“ _ THANK YOU _ ,” Kame said. When his hearing returned, Mal canceled the vocal amplifier he’d placed on Kame as well.

They followed Nighttail and Maw, at a distance. It didn’t appear they would need the backup of a platoon of Gnomes, as they closed in on Zuggok. Zuggok had turned his attention away from his servants-turned-attackers and was fiddling with something in a pouch at his waist. 

Not that Kame could think of anything that would do him much good. He was surrounded, and the grizzled Kobold guard in the lead was raising his sword to strike.  
Kame looked away. Violence never got easier to watch, and he counted that as a good thing.

Instead, he watched Granna’s face. She at least seemed amused.

At least, for a few seconds.

When her enthusiasm turned to dismay, Kame just thought she had finally come to the dramatic ethical realization that all violence was to be abhorred, which all civilized people eventually came to. Kame was so proud of her.

Then she drew her dagger and started running.

Kame looked back at Zuggok.

He had...changed.

He must have found what he was looking for -- a potion, or a wand with a pre-loaded spell. He was now huge! His mouth and teeth were bigger than Maw’s.

He had a red-scaled Kobold guard by the off arm, and had lifted him into the air by it. The guard struggled, blood gushing from the point of contact, and tried to stab his former Wyrm in the head with his sword arm.

The sword went right into Zuggok’s mouth, sinking deep into his saurian palate. He roared, and bit down reflexively.

The Kobold guard dropped to the floor, now missing both of his arms.

Kame choked down the urge to gag, and rushed to his aid, as Gnome Company started hitting the transfigured and enhanced Kobold Wyrm with everything they had. One of Granna’s daggers thudded into his shoulder, and the other clanged harmlessly off of his breastplate. An arrow from Mirra hit; a magic bolt from Mal went wide. And all about him the finest warriors the Blood Vow clan had stabbed through every chink and joint in his armor.

Wyrm Zuggok snarled and turned to face this new threat, whipping his now long and powerful tail as he went. Granna was able to duck and avoid it, but Mirra was looking down as she nocked her next arrow, and it hit her just beneath her ribcage.

She flew towards a corner, and tumbled to a halt, scraped and bruised but otherwise unharmed. Grabbing at a table, she struggled to pull herself to her feet.

Something on the table caught her eye.

Kame arrived at the side of the fallen Kobold warrior and immediately pulled twine from his healer’s kit to fashion into twin tourniquets, trying to tighten them across the stumps where his arms once were.   
  
This was not easy. In spite of the blood loss and shock, the Kobold was trying to return to battle.

“Sit still,” Kame commanded in Draconic. There was a pit of iron at the center of this peach.

The red-scaled Kobold glared at him while he worked.

“If a Kobold is to die, it should be in battle,” he spat weakly.  
  
Kame smiled, albeit a little tightly. “Maybe someday,” he said, and handed the armless reptile a healing potion to help stabilize his vitals while trying to close the ends of his exposed arteries. The Kobold looked like he wanted to swat the potion away, but realized he had nothing to swat with, and drank the elixir begrudgingly.

Kame looked up just in time to see the epic crescendo of the skirmish behind where the two sat -- Maw plowed into the enhanced Zuggok with a force that shook the room.

The old Wyrm put up a desperate fight at first, but although he was bigger now, Maw had been big for longer. With a sickening ripping sound and a horrid red splash, Maw -- 

Well. It’s not important what Maw did. The important thing was that it made Nighttail the new Wyrm.

At Nighttail's command, Maw threw the enlarged body to the floor. The Kobold raised her arms high over her head as Maw’s earsplitting roar echoed through the caves ( _ he is clearly overstimulated and should likely have a nap _ , Kame thought). The assembled Kobolds each dropped to one knee in deference.

Kame looked around at his fellow Gnomes -- Willow with a spacy look in her eye, Pigglevitch brooding and heaving his battle-ladder over one shoulder, Grimmil looking cautiously upbeat for the first time since the turtles, Mirra smiling proudly, Mal wiping a tear from one eye. Even Granna looked so happy she momentarily made Kame consider the possibility that all of her smiles up until this point had actually been frowns.

“Much better than the Ambassador,” Kame said proudly.


	14. A Quiet Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a quickie before part two starts...

Late that night, after many a celebratory round, Pigglevitch slid quietly into the room at the Piper that he shared with his sister.

Willow sat on the edge of her bed. Firelight gleamed, unseen, in her eyes as she stared with purpose at a spot immediately to the left and above a gray water stain on the wall.

He regarded her solemnly, as he regarded everything.

“It’s definitely him,” Pigglevitch said.

“Yes,” said Willow, not looking around.

The side of Pigglevitch’s lip twitched. Slowly, with much effort, he grinned.

It had been a while since he’d had cause to.


	15. The Guardian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small guardian of space-time finds something worth investigating.

Any place in the universe where the veil between this world and those immediately adjacent is a bit on the thin side, a cat watches over.

Cats have other purposes too, of course. Somebody has to kill the mice and the rats. Somebody has to soak up pools of sunlight before they spread everywhere. Somebody has to commune with the shadow beast that lives in the space between the refrigerator and the wall. And someone has to protect human families from those mysterious glowing red dots that zip around all over the walls and then vanish as quickly and unexpectedly as they came.

But they warden the boundaries between universes, too. Whether they volunteered, or were chosen, is a matter lost to the depths of time.

Although knowing cats, it probably wasn’t their idea.

Some places have multiple cats. It depends on how many tears in the Great Fabric there are. If there are enough cats, there might be an old lady, too. Cats are known to collect them.

Away in the manor on the hill, in the attic, there was only one cat, because there was only one little tear.

The cat's Human name was Roderick, but he preferred to go by “Smorch the Bloodsoaked” in feline circles.

Most often, he went by “Oh my  _ gosh, _ look at this little  _ cutie! _ ”

Which he was not thrilled about.

He'd eaten already today, a mouse he'd caught sniffing around some old bread the Master had left out.

The Master hadn't been back for days now. Roderick was intrigued to see if he’d ever turn up again. He was not particularly concerned by the prospect.

He could see the edges of the tear from where he lay on the desk administering every minute ablutive attention unto his left rear paw. Unlike most tears, it hadn't developed naturally. It was made very deliberately, and it was used for a very specific purpose.

Roderick wasn't here to judge. He was only here to monitor. 

As the cat licked away, he noticed movement in the corner of his eye, out beyond a window pane, cast against the strange stars of the beyond. His hunger was already sated for the moment, and he wasn't bored enough just yet for gruesome murder, so he ignored the movement until it grew more insistent.

Roderick paused, tongue still out, and looked at the thing that was calling to his attention.

He nearly bit his tongue right off.

He leapt off the table, and ran for the door.

It was rare that a cat guardian had anything to report. But when they did, they had to report it quickly.

Worlds hung in the balance.

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to upload a chapter each week. See you next Monday!


End file.
